Elephants pt. 2

[billy]

i'm very confused but that's another story , i'm going to give feedback on this latest edit as though i haven't seen the original (mainly because my brain is a fragile flower)

*Apologies for taking up space on the boards. but, the poem has taken a direction that separates it from the original (What Elephants Remember), and therefore I wanted to give it specific attention while also trying to improve the other*

V. 2 adjusted on previous comments by leanne and don

Leaving the water hole,
Uganda grasses would an and in front of this line help? other wise it's an obvious statement that grass is softer than dust
softer than the sun
soaked dust, Uganda is an awesome word, it has so many images attached to it.

Mother must have known
the time. We lost
her until sunset; would her moved up to the line above help the enjambment

could not tell
a flick of her tail
from the weeds,
or find a shred

of her tusks, once hung her feels a bit redundant
like strokes of thunder
over our own.

By then, the grass
was already caressing
her head, the way
elephants cannot, forgetting

how her missing teeth
had once devoured
the blades of daughters—

how she had led
all of us
to do the same.
After we found her

cold as desert
her sister led us
away, not wanting
to take

as much of her
as we did
as we left. really petty thing here but would and work better than the third as, which i know makes it a triple as thing and such

i just had a peek at the original and thought it was trying too hard to be minimal, this one works much better, the en jambs are much better placed here. i think this one has a feel to it that isn't too heavy. while tight, i don't think it too tight as to lose the sense of loss (which i think) you're aiming for.