What I saw first was an elephant, rising,
and though the sight was glorious, it was not half so
decadent as other feasts offered up
that day—women robed in flame wishing
through air and men in hats as tall as I,
on legs as tall as father, holding hoops (quite narrow,
they seemed) through which the women sped before
arrowing, violent and graceful as phoenix, into a pool
and streaming out (they were mermaids then, I was sure),
one, two, three, four, five spangled flyers
from one, two, three, four, even five corners
of the cornerless pool, into our thick applause—
so that, too quickly, I forgot her rising and fed
my eyes, instead, to gluttony.
But it is that first sight I would sip up had I to
choose just one of my lives to live again.
The first crunch of sawdust beneath my feet, her knees.
Popcorn stalled between my bag and my mouth.
There was meal enough in the sight of her rising.
First there was just her on her knees, skin char-grey
under those glares—even her naked hairs showing, sparse
and black—like sunken pride, like the chest of a dying man,
and then, her rising, the earth shifting forward
under the press of her knees, and I tilting
with it, we all tilted forward, so she could rise
ever so slowly (we heard trust in her heaves of breath),
and we were not breathing, an elephant stumbled,
we understood, as anyone might, we swallowed,
and then her rising, and the world put right,
and women, robed in flame, wishing through air.
Originally published in Cider Press Review, Volume 1.
