riding the elephant sideways
in a gray flannel skirt
camouflaged
she approaches wild rhinos
bare feet of the driver
steer the elephant’s ears
three meters off the ground
her own feet dangling
she grips the handrails
nothing prepared her
for the mounting
stairs and platform
the launching tower
she remembers ivory
the elephants’ graveyard
in an old Tarzan film
and now this elephant a detusked male
moving at daybreak towards the river
she wears the long gray skirt
with its faint smell of elephant
to symphony
fanfare of trumpets
oh marvelous the blind violinist
not that she can’t comprehend the elephant
or adapt to its motion
a slow roll
like a mild turbulence of ocean
in which she is not seasick
but that she never knew this kind of transport
plodding through marshland
half grass half water
trusting the great feet far beneath her
the coarse reeds opening before her