Elephant Visitors

        Sweet Young Thing: “Why are you all down in the mouth?”
	Testy Gent: “We’re all in the business of getting older,
	or so it seems; we’re moving on.  The daytime approach
	can fail you.  Sit on this moment,
	pause on this deck.  What if the earth fell on you?
	But the dirty salad of lies, etc., about assassination
	is approaching.  Something has not been found.”
	 
        Here, try the gloom in this room.
	I think you’ll find it more comfortable
	now that the assassins have gone away.
	Or got away.  Take a week and shut off the engines.
	But we do have to manage to stay here in the mountains, or at least
	hover, in place.  There are things I still haven’t told you.
	What is the state flower of Nova Scotia?
	 
        On whom do we depend
	when we twist downward tangled in the parachute
	and the ground is coming to greet us too quickly?
	That’s when you could use a newspaper,
	but try and find one in the prairie.  I was muffled
	by the elegance of it all
	but now I’ll take one step if only to save myself,
	yes, and others.  Doctors
	 
        never tell you why these four-footed quadrupeds are friends,
	if only foul-weather ones.  There’s a lot in envelopes,
	and in a hole behind the house,
	but if we think we’re better in this instance,
	give them something they WANT.  Tasseled trees.
	Until which time we sign off—wait, the lotus
	wants to say something: it’s MADE IN JAPAN.