Ode For An Elephant Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(on the occasion of Elephant Day)


(i)

Surge of wind,
a two-legged
tornado whizzed
to cut corners

cleaving emerald
clouds of grass
sprouting from
the rising mountain

of your strides,
O elephant,
one clubbing leg
rolled on rails
of your track

one raking
brushing step
after the other

around dust
in breezy feathers
and a trailing

zephyr, a trumpet
of you elephant
carrying no gale,

but a mass
of your breezy
stroll, trumpeting

life, your trunk
spinning
a trumpet's bell.

Hilly ambling
elephant
spinning a breeze,

you walk
in and through
your elastic
wind sowing
into earth

mulch for egret
claws to
leave their print

on your back
and on
your paw falls

to harness
the growing
mound of you,

your babies
tracking you
to stroke your tail;

leaving a silver
flower of earth
to stand
on tentacled roots

wheeling you
through the breeze

of your flapped
ears, wings
that fly as you stand,

swirling into
a hunter green
screen
of reeds
and grassy vines

weaving a nest
of walls
to creep and curl
with fern grass.


(ii)

You're not
the four-legged
storm surge,

the hurricane
wheeled
to crush life,

but you walk
across your
ambling
field of a slow

wind
and breeze,
breathing out

a paced gale
of strokes
and brushes

from your
swinging trunk
touching
deep larynxes

like the keyboard
of a piano
shooting out
a bass to fly
with a rolling drum,

the only guard
riding
on your back,

the wind of a trunk
trumpeting
through life.

Elephant,
you carry
no storm's
cutting swoop,

a beast larger
than you
standing,

while you roll
into a breeze.

(iii)

O storm
of a poacher
in a field

of camouflaging
.grass
and brush,

let his trajectory
stroke a muzzle
to pop out
only with a puff

pushing
a fast wind back
to slip
by the elephant
as it strolls back

into its breezy
castle
of ambling space.

(iv)

Elephant
in your storm,
spin
and stitch
a slowed-down
pace into
faster strides

on space cut
through
and trailed
by your babies.

Let man's
giant strides slip
by your
hare pace,

as you settle
in the palisaded
undulating
space
of your castle.