Elephants

I look beneath the portico, your legs,
and see your baby in their frame,
munching on a branch. She has a rough
and wrinkled rind, her knees are knotted like
a buckled, knuckled tree. To stroke
her bristled, hairy skin is like running
through fields of brittle cornstalks.
Her backbone is a hill, such a sure
and sturdy curve, it reassures.

This girl has ears that could be paper,
veined like leaves and shaped like Africa.
Her eyes cry clay, her legs are drumsticks
booming on dry earth. A snake-like snout
is slaty, socket-tipped and swaying
like a bucket in a well, or the pendulum
of an antique clock, and she looks just as old.
An elderly baby: sagging, bony, grey,
with too much skin draped on
like dirty sheets to hide a corpse.
She's clumsy and imperfect, but so beautiful -
the colour of stormclouds, with thunder
footsteps. I love you like a child does,
more for your hard skin and your soft heart.
I'd cry my fears into your arid flesh
and rest my head inside the crook of your
meandering, majestic trunk.

So when I'm low, I think of elephants.
And through your oaken shanks I see myself,
a baby catching words in whorls of ears
to write them down, enthralled by each
new moment, gnawing at the tree.
And when I hear the brouhaha, I know,
it's just you running here to cuddle me.