Dream of Elephants

Photo by Geran de Klerk on Unsplash

I spend a lot of time thinking about elephants. Maybe too much time — but I think their broad bodies and gentle hearts can handle it. Today I was thinking about elephants walking, and about a nickname the mean kids gave me when I was young.

I dream again of elephants.

As they step through the savannah of my sleeping mind

my body rocks and sways

moved by reverberations of their footsteps.

Elephants whose every step on the earth is a question

waiting for another body to rock and sway in answer.

It makes me think about my childhood nickname.

Maybe when I walked the kids said "Boom"

because they felt something powerful travel underneath them --

they didn't know how to hold.

I sent my body out into the world

looking for a rock and sway in answer.

It was taken up by rocks and trees and things that grew from the soil.

I learned to love silent things, solid things.

things that held their wisdom in a space and time

just outside the limits of my senses.