Elephant and Robot

Elephant and Robot

Elephant nestles within my palm
gold flaked green, hidden, unseen.

Everyone else goes and gathers around
a silver-grey robot, who struts and poses
inviting wonder at flashing red lights
at cyborg enhancements and sink plunger weaponry.
He's horrid, I hate him, I know that he's cheating,
that somebody's got to be pulling his strings
for his angular movements give him away
quite apart from the clatter of knee joints and bunions.

Elephant whispers tales of the jungle
wide plains, watering holes, snakes and tigers.

Robot grows jealous.
He jumps off the table with grunts and beeps,
but his metal feet slip on the laminate flooring.
He cracks his head and his lights go out
and despite all his fine talk of William Hartnell,
of time, and relative dimensions in space,
he can't move, or untie the tangles above. 

I turn away, holding on tight to Elephant,
close my hand round his cool green body
feel the rhythm, run with the herd.


Comments

[Catherine Edmunds]

Published in anomalous appetites