SHIRLEY
Shirley, this old elephant on the Nature special,
had lived completely alone for twenty years
cared for by a devoted keeper who washed her
and trimmed her nails,
but that’s not the same as a companion elephant.
Elephants are herd-creatures like us,
so poor Shirley, who once worked in a circus,
it must have pained her, twenty years in solitude.
But after her circus years and the twenty lonely years
they sent her to an Elephant Pure Land,
a great good place in Tennessee
where they take in abused or saddened elephants,
and there she met an old friend from circus days
and they trumpeted and stroked each other
and they actually hugged with their trunks
and couldn’t be separated forever and ever.
I thought in my yearly Valentine’s poem
I might use this image of loving elephants
to please my dear wife, except it’s tricky,
an elephant-reference can insult a lady.
A joke to us, but in Indian poetry
serious sexiness is meant
when Shiva feels stirred by slim Shakti and notes
that she moves in her walk “like an elephant.”
To Shakti and Shiva, that delicate gait’s
voluptuous: a dancerly sway
you can see at the zoo, or the circus parade,
or in some 3 a.m. reverie
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