What Elephants Remember

[Leanne]

OK Geoff, I'm only looking at the latest version because I've been slack, so apologies if I repeat anything that's already been said/done. I had a read over the other versions and wow! The transformation is extreme! In the editing process, you have brought out the real poem.

V. 4

Drought had led us -- led? forced?
to the water
hole, Uganda
grasses softer
than the sun
soaked dust.

Mother must have
known the time.
We lost her
until sunset;
could not tell
a flick of her -- lovely enjambment

tail from the weeds,
or find a flash -- do tusks flash? I know the colour would theoretically stand out against the grasses, but flash gives a connotation of brightness and the ivory isn't polished when it's still on its owner
of her tusks, once
hung like strokes
of thunder over
our own. -- fantastic simile

By then, the grass
was already caressing
her head, the way
elephants cannot, forgetting
how her missing teeth
had once devoured

its daughters—
how she had led
all of us
to do the same.
We found her
cold as desert -- this stanza and the preceding are my favourite, they're incredibly emotive

and, to be honest, -- not at all keen on "to be honest" -- the honesty is implicit and the phrase itself is just a filler
did not want
to take away
as much of her
as we did
as we left.