by Michael J. Morris
I wrote to you of tusks but never
the rumpled cracks of the grey skin
that protected a calm beast. You wrote
to me about tails, just tails, as if
no body would ever attach to them.
I replied with the leathery parchment
of ears but never showed you the full face,
its tears and curling trunk that cleaned
the body. You gave me legs but not the heartbeat,
spine, or silhouette to entangle with.
Everything we wrote was a shadow
of love as a fully realized creature.
No animal moved by being so myopically
described. The way we fight is like
four blind men trying to depict an animal
with clumsy, blunt words. But we nursed
our bruised love as we witnessed
a departure. An elephant with feathery plumes
in patterns of sevens gliding into the heavens.
We let go of the trivial, our mess, as the elephant
bends sharp behind a cumulus puff. We were always
obscured by our own clouds. Like love,
the creature always flew over our heads.
We kept the wings of the elephant a secret
the way the gods did.
Michael J. Morris is from Rochester, New York and is an MFA candidate at Bowling Green State University. He is an assistant editor for Mid-American Review. His work has appeared in Anti-Heroin Chic.
Hawaii Pacific Review 