What Elephants Remember

[billy]

Matriarchs may store the most
in their cerebellum drawers: i like the opening, specially the 2nd line. drawers having more than one meaning.
shelves of maps to water holes,
photographs of their mothers'
bone and silent ivory,
white as marble in a field. field seems a bit week when you can use words like veldt as well as many others

As a calf, those tusks had hung it reads a little that the calf had tusks
in the air like strokes of thunder
chiseled from a cloud, only 2 L's in chiselled, nice images in this stanza

to unravel into dentin, while dentin is probably the right word, it feels out of place, how about a metaphor or simile?
pulp, and blood as an adult,
who may pass a graveyard with
names for every body buried
in the softened grass, not knowing
how it hurts to forget, too. the grammar is messing with my head.

i thought the last stanza was the weakest and i thing it should have been the strongest (if you wanted to hit a nerve or emotion in the reader)

the 1st and last line of it are the problem area. the 1st line doesn't have the sensibility of the subject matter connected to it.

i did enjoy the piece a lot and have read it more than a few times. i think an edit aimed at the last stanza would make this one a real gem.

thanks for the read.