Elephant's Graveyard Iii Poem by Morgan Michaels

Sacred to elephants since time began-
elephants who accept their end ungrudgingly
with relief and no snivel,
having long ago made it a point to live their lives well
confident of a just repose.

'Oh, my God, ' you think, 'all the ivory.'
Ivory slung about, half-sunk, everywhere
strewn, grass-entangled, trip-you up ivory,
cause that's all that's left of an elephant, after time-
after a century or so, that's really it-
a tusk of ivory bearing in this respect

sharp resemblance to a man's poetic toil
or the opera-ticket stub found in his breast pocket
by his grand-child, rummaging in the attic
a century after the time when the music stopped
and stopped forever, never to resume;

toppled stalagmites of ivory, some taller than a man,
cracked by the sun, washed by the rain, buffed by the moon.
Surely, someone would buy all that ivory for market
to make dice, dominoes, piano keys, dentures;
But how to get it home-would Swiss-Air take it?

stowed in sheaths...