Elephants Walking

I.
Curled in a window seat, level with wind-swayed oak,
	aching on a green vinyl pad,
I think of the fortunes spent on the hardwood, wainscot
	study, and the slates fitted
for the arbor walkways, the labor it took to lug bricks out
	to each overly articulated
corner, in which nook a child of fortune, cushion- tassel
	between his fingers, might
look up from his reading to see in heat waves rising
	over the pale, shimmering
delphinium, a plot miracle perhaps, the sudden death
	by spontaneous combustion
and the child wondering how, why, and could it have been?

II.
My childhood bedroom, summer night, one hand marking
	the book, the others palm
and fingers printing moist, disappearing shadows on the wall.
	Then the college library,
Harkness Hall, and aged, white-cowled Father Benilde
smelling of coffee, muscatel,
and Old Spice as he opened the doors at 7:30.  First in line
	I was all business, heading
straight to my end of a long, immovable table, to my first
	reading of Dante, a paperback
copy of Ciardi, with its cover of red, grinning, cartoon
	Devils, which I in a fit
of verisimilitude (which word I had just learned)
	add chard with a lighter.

III
My first lines that year: "Butt, butt, bale beast.
	I fear your horns not
in the least!  My intended tone was courtly love
	but the words were
apostrophe to a buffalo in Roger Williams Park,
	one that had leaned
hard into a sagging hurricane fence near my date.
	The lines came to me
as I woke after a nap in the library.  I still love
	to sleep in libraries
whenever I can.  I fix my head sideways over
	my folded hands
and make room for the little puddle of drool
	I'll quickly wipe away.
I wake into a barely believable clarity
	throughout my body.
I'm ready to grapple with fate, love, sex,
	the stirrings within.
Over readers and sleepers alike hovers a mist
	or a pollen, and in it
I see words shuttling back and forth like birds.
	In the darkness or dream
something hugely important had been freed,
	to roam.  Grateful,
I say to myself, "Elephants have been walking."

IV.
"Son, we must give this country great poetry!"
	decreed the older poet
to my nodding head, as he shook my hand after
	the Crystal Room reading.
Later, as I walked back to my dormitory, sleet
	failed to cool me,
I turned his pronoun over and over, thinking,
	yes, we do, we do.
On the news there was familiar footage:
	a Phantom run
ending in a hypnotic burst of a lift yellow napalm.
	I new the war
was wrong, but that was why, I claimed, I should go,
	to sing the song
of high lament, to get it into the books.  Like Ishmael
	I would sign on
for a three-year voyage under a madman captain.
	Frissons to be had
instantly, a pity-the-youth-soon-dying look in the eyes.
	"Are you crazy?"
said my girlfriend.  But I was filled with vibrant life
	and felt neither suicidal
nor confused when I dialed the Marine recruiter: "Yes,
	I look forward to reporting."
Phone in my lap, I sat sideways, my legs dangling
	over the arms of my red
leather reading chair.  A warm spring wind was
	melting the snow
down to bright medallions of ice.  I felt clear-headed
	and refreshed.
I just hoped the war would last until I got there.
	Elephants were walking.