Disaster Areas 
for Josie


The elephants have multiplied
in a forest beyond the world
(though in this world
they dwindle).

Or beyond the world one elephant
wags in the vagueness
or wags in the brilliance
of vast transcosmic spaces.

Or mindspace is one elephant
inside of which a cosmos
turns its thought.


And every thought that rises easily seems
to ride one elephant
just as before,
each ponderous step, the heart beat of some cosmos
and thought is a wheel…

*

Disaster regions plague the globe
through which my elephant passes
seeking immemorial grounds
safe from marauders
to which it must return 
as to some cosmic home beyond the world
there to release its store of furious memory
that the world through which it made its lifelong sojourn
might turn once more—

each thought released compels one turn of the void
that forms a world

*

And every thought yet seems 
a chest of inestimable treasure
mounted on some elephant
locked against a forest of marauders,
terrible poachers of ivory, 
out to ruin another sacred realm
that precious thoughts still walk in…

*

A thousand elephants walk beyond the world
their great trunks wagging in the dimness
and the trumpet calls they utter to each other
pass as waves of thought across the void
causing waves of thought across the world
to disturb our mortal slumber…

*

Sad are worlds in tow of captive elephants—
broken worlds—

*

The elephants thrash in chains 
for children in a theme park
on holiday to ride them—
they sway in disconsolate rhythms
in the park dust
while the children clamor.

And the cosmos is some theme park …

Each planet is in tow 
on the back of an elephant
proceeding with constant tread
about some dusty sun

and every thought that rises in an earth mind
sparks at the end of a ray from an elephant's eye
across such planetary spaces

and everywhere the elephants are rocking
in grief that they cannot return
to immemorial grounds

to revive the worlds…