The Elephant Fort

by

The Elephant Fort

Black beauties in chains-
Before the ticket counters,
A long queue does creep
To scatter near the black wonders.

Ears and tails always move,
Ruminating the rhythms of forest.
Elephants are inside the fort,
Exposed to the sky barest.

I hear the hushed emotions
In the clinking of chains.
Hearts smolder in;
Eyes emit lava of pains.

Burning red wild flowers
And tickling streams,
Each elephant longs I know:
But dreams die in chains.

Anakotta(a fort for the elephants) in Kerala, India is a tourist place,
where you see a large number of elephants together. All are chained.
This poem had been published by Pear Tree Press, US and Forward
Poetry, UK.


Comments

jreinhart's picture
I'm fascinated with elephants, and the times I've been to the zoo when the elephants are inside, they do seem to exude a melancholy. Perhaps it is their size that somehow calls for expansive plains to roam. That last stanza captures the pain built up in the previous stanzas. The last line in particular is striking, with its alliteration and the movement of vowel sounds.

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Kate Sender's picture
The rhythmic balance of life, being crushed, with slow precision. The rhyming couplets within each stanza, with use of embedded internal metrics, engages the senses of sight, sound, touch, leading to the poignant resolution. I also believe elephants retain the tribal memory of their mastodon forebears, which I can see in your poem. Although I hold their dream, like the rhythm of life, merely hibernates, passed on through the ages..

Kate Sender
"Striving to live the ordinary life in a non-ordinary way"
(Book of Runes)

https://www.facebook.com/kate.sender.1
http://writing.com/authors/manga_kate

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