On the desert coast of Namibia, one
Lone elephant survives, a matriarch
With broken tusks. Orphaned, widowed and bereft,
Abandoned even by hungry poachers
Of ivory as not worth the hunt, she will
Never again feel on her face the sweet wind
Of a breathing trunk that says you are dear to me,
Or know in her bones the deep infrasound
Rumble of love from mates or offspring long since dust.
We cannot sense that lowest tone with our
Own small, inadequate ear, but you may
Feel it in the deepest core, if you stand
In springtime by the windy Namibian sea:
A soundless trembling in the atmosphere,
It is the offshore call of endangered great
Blue whales, all swimming south with urgency
To mate, the self-same rumble uttered once
In joy by this tusk-shattered elephant.
Now if you want to rend your saddened heart,
Go there, at sunset, near a certain dune
Overlooking the Atlantic. She daily comes,
To commune with the only souls in all the air
She breathes who speak a dialect of her tongue.
Attend: when long-sundered cousins call, she shudders
Into song. In the air and through the ground, along
Your nerves and in your pulsing blood, you will sense
A motion, a reverberation of the mind:
You would weep to know what griefs are being shared.
R. McCraw Helms is retired from Arizona State University’s English Department. His recent poems have appeared in such venues as Tipton Poetry Journal, Dove Tales, and Canyon Voices.