Elephants
My grandfather would entertain us run his finger
across the rim of his used wine glass filled with water
a loud and glorious vibration a clarion call throughout
his old house his old hands arthritic and crooked
such a demanding sound I don’t always believe
our dreams live on I still shudder for that sound
that quake of horror and joy
there’s a world where poets dress elephants
into their finery it's all innocent really I remember
him
in moments the ones he lost like when he let me
ride on his back and I commanded him
to be an elephant and he had no problem blasting
his trumpet as he carried me through the jungle
or how he made wisdom a small delicate thing a dash
of salt in his palm or when he made it all too loud
and crashing his professorial voice a searchlight
leaving no shadows or when he asked my baby
brother to repeat a joke that he'd already told
a million times and he would laugh
as if it were the first time he’d ever heard it
or when he'd been working out and flexed his biceps
and he let me touch them and I felt the strength
of ancestors who built their houses over sorrow
or when I was staying with him for a weekend
and I was having nightmares about Invasion of the
Bodysnatchers and he let me sleep in his bed
and he didn't smell like dad and I could see his arms
and legs touched over with veins and age and sweat
and scars and I realized that the aliens wouldn't want
him because he was too much himself too terribly
much himself and what a lovely thought to send you
off to the Land of Nod
or these odd stories he’d tell like when he was staying
at The Beverly Hills Hotel for some reason
and Groucho Marx was staying in the next room
with his wife and horrible fights broke out
and he could hear it all through the walls
or when his father was drinking martinis with friends
into the wee hours of the morning and he had to go
and rescue him and how he read his father the riot
act but if he had it all to do over again he would’ve asked
his father to pour one for him
George King George a touch of madness a touch
of reluctance the Aegean winds carrying him
from one cradle to another call one mortality
and the other his kingdom of moments either way
an elephant without his finery is just as well