The Elephant in the Room

The Elephant in the Room

I know you won’t believe me, but it’s there;
large as life, it sits there,
this trembling elephant,
big, grey, lumpy
spoiling for a fight

This is not some docile, nurturing cow,
but an old rogue bull,
sated from roaring and rampaging
ripping off thatched roofs
and uprooting trees


It sits without a word – it cannot speak -
and takes up too much space with its huge, wrinkled presence
in the thin confines of this tiny room

I try to stay out of its way,
moving gingerly
speaking quietly
thinking that if I do not acknowledge it, it will go away
but it is just so … there!

The elephant looks at me,
every so often,
from beneath half-lidded, lashless eyes,
watery with unshed tears,
and asks me to remember
how it got here

My sigh is huge,
deep as the elephant’s watering hole,
but stale and fetid
a scum of green algae on the surface
and the edges trodden down and muddy

Every so often, the elephant swings its snake-like trunk
around the room,
waggles its tusks, distracting me,
knocking memories off the shelves
and shattering windows into bits of splintered glass
which fly off through the roofless room
like a flock of little silver birds




© Melanie Turner
August 12, 2009