The Path
The ramp wound up through trees
and the trellis was tattooed with roses.
I grasped the air for sex
and found a mountain in a dream.
The unfamiliar human with habits
already prepared for my comforts
cried at the ease of the unnecessary
conversations. I was friendship and relief
then days of living as if surrounded
by a thousand children, but alone.
No city is too large for our minds,
no culture shattered enough. Of elephants,
bereaved, remarried, no one flinches.
Single file on the lumbering path we tread
tails and trunks in love knots
with trumpets of suffering quashed till dusk.