The Spirit of the Gaurdian
Show me the ink on your body.
I remove his shirt and lay my hands on his chest,
My face at his navel.
I trace with my nose the image of the spirit that follows him,
Kiss the tear in the elephant’s eye,
And draw my body up to look at his face.
I reconstruct the image with my fingertips
And now it has become a part of my soul,
Transmission.
Elephants mourn their dead.
They know the bones of their species
And when encountered stop to examine their remains.
They embrace their bones and hold them
As though with human arms and human thoughts.
Emotion is universal,
Not limited to singular beings and singular bodies
In transient time or transient space.
When I feel, then,
I am unifying myself with the eternal.
Just now I am so small in his arms,
My fingers curled in his hands.
There is dirt under his fingernails
And I want to wash his hands
And hold them close in mine.
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