Elephant

In a world of watery hues,
greens and blues,
her vision is binocular,
staring at the moon, oblivious to stars.

Her worn ears, torn ears, flare,
moth-eaten flags as she sways
through overhanging leaves,
trunk reaching. She grieves.

Vibrations of heart and lungs
ripple wavelike across skin,
map of life ingrained
with wrinkles, rubs and stains.

Floundering feet, ancient prints in the dust,
track memories older than her tusks.

Kim M. Russell, 5th October 2020

Image by Jean Wimmerlin on Unsplash

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My response to earthweal weekly challenge: Haunted Wilderness

Brendan says that, since it’s October, we are ‘revisiting our earthweal sights on the haunted world we’re inheriting and ever in the act of passing on. Extinction is the chilling, ever-growing shadow formed by the Anthropocene: the haunting is vast.’ He quotes from Rebecca Giggs’ Fathoms: The World in the Whale and the idea that ‘when animals die out, the cultural and ecological relationships that furnish their existence can be experienced as a kind of nonstop haunting’.

For this challenge, Brendan asks us to write of haunted wilderness. He has posed a number of questions to get us thinking.

I chose to re-write a poem I wrote back in 2015.

17 thoughts on “Elephant”

  2. I love this, Kim, it is such an intimate portrait of the mind and body of the elephant. You trace the entire contour, taking in both vision that is “binocular,” a gait that “sways” and skin that “ripples.” We need remembrances of ghosts so finely drawn. – B

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