The Day I Read You The Elephant Poem

I knew how it started, scanned the first lines
made a quick judgement on subject matter
and knowing you liked elephants, began.
I wanted to be the kind of woman
who reads poems with well chosen subjects
in bed to her new lover of one night
and because I wanted to keep you there
and saw that already you were leaving.

Like many things the poem started well
But when I was so far in, couldn't stop
(elephant poems have their own momentum)
of course the poem started to go wrong
and I didn't want to be a woman,
disordered, crying over elephants
or someone with need in their eyes using
anything to keep lovers in their bed.

Then the poem finished and I was glad.

Lovers leave, they come back. Nothing simple
as an elephant poem will keep them.
I'll read you the elephant poem again
and all the poems in between will not
be reasons either. I know someone can
grow used to a woman who cries about
these things and that someone else can learn
to let a lover go, trusting they'll come back.