Trunk nuzzles unmoving trunk,
Ear, foot, tail,
And receives no reciprocation.
An elephant mother, bereft
Of her calf, is inconsolable,
And I know that her grief
Is not borne of instinct or
Darwinian necessity.

“Like a patient etherised upon a table.”
Eliot and Prufrock
Don’t do justice to a mother
Watching her child being put to sleep.
Morpheus creeps his way into vein,
And eyes close instantly, no countdown,
Breath and heart reduced to ant whispers.
Pretty, plastic box slides into incinerator—
Magnetic Resonance Imager—
And hours later, baby Lazarus
Returns to mother.
Though she knows death won’t last,
She grieves for her child,
And I know that her grief is as real
As an elephant mother’s.