I wrote these two poems shortly before meeting up with Colleen and Erin as I passed through NamNao national park in northern Thailand, one of the few places where one can still find wild elephants. I didn't actually see any elephants, but I wrote these two poems about what I did find during my time there.
Searching for Elephants
Eventually
Groves of bamboo give way to
Mixed deciduous forest
Broadleaves, reeds,
And palms
Different shapes for all the different ways to cook shrimp
Vines grappling with emerging trees
Breaking free from the suppression
Of the canopy
Enacting its own functional chokehold from below
And from the forest floor,
Frogs crying out from the Nam Nao,
The cool water.
And all the while,
Providing the type of
Languid, sensory experience
That only a jungle can provide
As I struggle to interpret these signals.
While instead
Finding a brief moment of communion
With the lords of this realm
Trash Receptacle
In turn, footprints and bamboo splinters
Give way to the baker's dozen,
The thatcher's worst nightmare
And the dung beetle's fantasy
A clay oven masterpiece
That looks better and bigger
Than your first time baking a loaf
Of sourdough bread
Yes, I'm talking about elephant shit.
But I take a closer look and realize
Where this brick and mortar starts to crumble
I've seen this before, perhaps on a
Tour of a recycling plant when I was a kid
Or the side of a highway,
Any highway
The end result of a functioning
Trash compactor
And then I try to imagine
What it's like to have a lactasoy carton
And a black trash bag
Pass through my intestinal tract
And then later my rectum
And what exactly it means
To produce and reproduce
Shit
Over and over again
No comments:
Post a Comment