It's hard to retrieve our elephant nature without the grasslands, without our family gathered around, and even without the moon to paint us silver.

::::::::

What am I shouting?

I saw a photo of an elephant in a concrete cell

alone,

so alone.

She was holding her own tail with her trunk

to close the circle of

herself,

a loop of loneliness,

standing, eyes closed

to the long sentence of her life.

I just would like to know. . .

What?

I just would like to know!

How can the intelligence that created such a creature

stand by and watch it suffer so.

And then I realized,

that's me.

That's all of us,

holding our tails in our trunks.

But were we not created to thunder

and trumpet

and love each other

as only elephants can,

crossing the great grasslands

and rest together as a family?

And as we slumber,

to be painted silver by the moon?

So, is that it?

Because,

because . . . so many years of standing back

and watching things unravel

have taken a toll on me,

on my elephant nature.

And so I shout out

into the tornado,

but what I shout

even I

don't know.

Authors Website: https://garylindorff.wordpress.com

Authors Bio:

Gary Lindorff is a poet, writer, blogger and author of several nonfiction books, a collection of poetry, "Children to the Mountain" and a memoir, "Finding Myself in Time: Facing the Music" Over the last few years he has begun calling himself an activist poet, channeling his activism through poetic voice. He also writes with other voices in other poetic styles: ecstatic, experimental and performance and oracular.


He is a practicing Transformational Counselor (with a strong, Jungian background) and a shamanic practitioner. His shamanic work is continually deepening his partnership with the land. This work can assume many forms, solo and communal, among them: prayer, vision questing, ritual sweating, and sharing stories by the fire.