Elephants

In this long summer of us,
you clutch my hand in the wet sunshine
as I lay gently beside you and whisper only of the elephants
but you only see my second rate imitations in obsessed delirium
 
I spent all night pouring my soul into crowded notebooks,
recreating our lost moments of touch,
but you only saw gibberish and scribbles with biros, pencils and crayons......
and the elephant shaped mess of my world
 
Great, big, real, whole, sagging, floating, moving, busy, grey and brown creatures are loose
in the hospitals, streets, alley ways, bus stops, crammed in trains, restaurants and supermarkets!
 
I perch among them and try to reach these
lithe, discarnate beings with my long lamenting stares, my soulful poetry and my magic, mantra that consists of the one word
'elephants'
 
I touch your fiercely, warm centre with a smiling, separated face
as kaleidoscopic dandelions brush against the nucleus of my pain,
my eyes graze the cumulus sky
I tell you softly about the shapes of clouds
but I really only see  the elephants