Elephant

The elephant is so immense that up close it is impossible to see in focus.
Its eyelashes are long and thick: they arch
Like the cables of a bridge. The eye’s iris is dense orange,
Darker orange than late leafs; thin black lines spread from the black pupil.
The light that hits the eye is varied by shadow and glare,
So the iris has all times: In places bright as early morning or dark as dusk.
At its center, the iris curves under itself, opening up to the pupil.

The skin-lines are deep and permanent, like cracks in the desert floor.
Between these lines the skin is patterned like scales or bumpy like leather.
Wrinkles are from an elephant’s smiles and grief.

The trunk is there, and from this angle it slants a little
Like a nose (Even if people had orange eyes and gray skin,
Even then, you wouldn’t be inclined to call it human)
But it bends on itself: muscular, loose, soft, and wrinkled.

Every morning, when I look at this close-up photo, my desktop background,
My skin is soft from the steam of my shower, but cold and tightening in air.
Leaning to my computer, I remember a magazine article
I read once, about elephants suffering
As if from PTSD. Some attacked human villages.
These elephants would return to fields where they had buried the dead.
They acted like depressed humans, the journalist wrote.

Today, I saw an article about seven elephants
Killed by one train in India in an accident.
There were photos of the corpses being lifted by rope and wooden
Cranes. The tight ropes pull from the neck. The eyes are closed.
The head and trunk are loose to one side, no rigor mortis.
Five of the elephants had “attempted to rescue two young ones on the track.”

—EWW