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Elephants All Over Oliver |
On August 1, 1926 the elephants with a touring circus
escaped from the old CPR station on 109 street and
wandered into adjacent neighbourhoods.
Despite all precautions due a Sunday,
several lumbering images broke loose.
Surfing homeward through waves of caragana,
they discovered savannahs on the August lawns
and baobab trees disfigured into spruce and maple.
This modern city responded in kind:
weekend watchmen glared, dared them closer;
policemen searched their manuals for procedure;
young couples on strolling dates gloated over
this something that was so uncalled-for;
children arrived home late,
as they do from watching gophers, dragonflies,
and elephants in the lane;
and a small, frail woman, her frame thin as elephant skin,
beat a fistful of dahlias against the flank of one
to keep it from the peonies.
But the person who clutched each renegade's wispy tail
as though he were a brother elephant,
and who led it back to corral and circus ring,
directing deceitfully from behind,
was a plain-clothes clown,
a stranger to this town. | LISTEN to this poem:
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© D.D. Elves |
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