Member-only story
Floating Elephants
A poem
I leap into the next fox-hole
And lie down, sheltering.
Progress of a kind, I suppose
For each lies further from the fray.
But no matter how far I travel
They’re still fox-holes.
The dirt’s the same, as is the mud
And I keep jumping in, willingly,
Pursued by a past of my own making.
Each dug out offers a place to pause and catch my breath
Before the next tumble, and the next,
Too busy to wonder:
What guns do I hide from, where’s the enemy fire?
Lying back, I look at the sky:
So many floating elephants
Drift across the heavens. A camel
Of a cloud dissolves into a cat.
Shadows from passing birds
Flicker across the muddy wall.
Perhaps, braving the gun fire,
I could fill the hole with dirt
Then plant some flowers.
Or instead create a pond for frogs
And lie here listening to their nightly melody.
