Elephant Bones

Bones are meant for the living.Take the elephant, two consciousnessesabove our own. She is the queen mother,la belle et le bête, a walking text of herself.They, the clan, gathered the bones that wereand weren’t their own, clutching the skeletonlike the Eucharist. When they cameupon the cadaver, the elephants askedone another to be alone awhile,for this was a dark, irreversible communion:palms with stigmata, birth of a muse. The obsessionwith bones went on for days, so they took turns for food,bowing to pay respects. This is howDemeter mourned her daughter: nuzzlingfruit pits with poppies hung from her ears,spreading grief through the dry fields.