Written for Wea’ve Written Weekly.
Our PoW, Heather, invites us to
have a conversation with nature
and/or any living thing written in
the form of an irregular ode.
O great grey traveler,
you walk as if the ground were listening,
and perhaps it is. Perhaps the red earth
learns your weight the way a drum learns a hand.
What do you know of gold?
They have hung it from your brow,
set turquoise where your thoughts begin,
spilled a carpet of indigo and burgundy
across the mountain of your back
as though you were a throne, a shrine,
a festival that knew no end.
Do the little bells speak to you
with every step? Do they sound
like rain beginning somewhere far away?
I think you wear it the way a hill wears evening,
patiently, knowing it will pass.
What do you know of distance?
You who hear thunder through your feet,
who call to kin across the miles
in voices too low for my small ears,
a conversation running underneath the world
while I stand here, deaf to all of it, praising.
And what do you know of grief?
They say you linger by the bones of those you loved,
turning them gently with your trunk as if reading a letter
in a language only the living and the dead can share.
Teach me that tenderness.
Teach me to hold what is gone
without breaking it.
Your skin is a map of dry rivers,
each crease a season you outlasted.
Your ears are two continents fanning the heat away.
Your trunk is a hand, a trumpet, a question,
lowered now toward the grass,
curled at its tip like a word not yet spoken.
Forgive us our ornaments.
We dress what we cannot hold.
We lead with a slender rope
what could walk through a wall of us, and does not.
Is that gentleness yours,
or a gift you choose to give?
What do you know of the ages?
Everything, I think.
You were already ancient
when the first of us learned to kneel.
So walk on, old wisdom,
slow as a planet, soft as dust,
under your borrowed jewels;
you are the brightest thing on the plain.
NAR©2026
#W3
This video was made 8 years ago; it is “Clair de Lune” by Debussy played on the piano to a then 80-year-old blind elephant named Ampan. As of 2026 she is still alive and living a well-cared-for life in Thailand, still listening to and enjoying music. She has a beautiful spirit.
Everything on The Elephant’s Trunk was created by me, except where otherwise indicated, and may not be used without permission. Thanks for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.
