I have eaten ghosts and they lay between my
teeth, my lips, between my fingers like quiet ivory rings--
elephant tusks are sharper than ever when you're
on the back of one, watching the ivory knives
sway in time with their metronomic steps;
their skin is gray and wrinkled, rippling under our hands
like a warm wind and we hold close, hoping
that we do not fall to dust as grandmother did,
reduced to old ceramic on the bookshelf
that still needs dusting,
still needs dusting since we moved in--
there is dust everywhere these days.
it leaks beneath the door, pours from the sky,
ship-shop of elephant feet on the dirt roads.
I can taste it behind my tongue, under my tongue,
and the words that she used to speak somehow resonate
in the quiet of my close-lipped mouth,
like an echo, like the pulse of an elephant heart.
"There is wisdom behind their ears, dear. Sometimes,
it you're quiet enough, you can feel it beneath your fingers."
fingers fumble to that quiet behind africa-map ears,
puncturing words to my throat before they are spoken,
a serengeti silence I know she is indulging, even now.
there is a spot, still and quiet from metronome steps,
quiet but for her dust-riddled words
where my own should have been.
"They say an elephant never forgets. But you see,
the wisdom is that he never truly knows."
