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Mark Williams
reads
Attachments
in Real Audio format.
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An elephant, the story goes, is buried in the schoolyard
or maybe beneath the gym, at center court,
skull tipped up, orbits aimed
at children. I hear the children’s voices, laughs,
yells, screams combining into one
as my beagles pull me toward the sound,
their muscles firing, transferring up the leashes
to the muscles in my forearms, up into my shoulders.
This is how it must have sounded nearly
seventy years ago. On this field,
a circus tent, overnight, appeared,
ropes pegged out to hold the canvas.
Inside, children held to strings that stretched
to balloons of every color, cheering at
sequined horses, screaming at the old elephant,
its foot above a women’s yellow hair.
The night before—you were nine or ten, asleep
one floor above the street—a string
was tied around your right big toe,
running beneath the sheet and out the window,
dropping to the yard, winding in a ball. At four
o’clock you felt the tug. Rising from your dreams,
you heard the call a buddy makes to run
a mile to watch a tent, rising with the sun.
Some days, now, we walk my dogs together.
When school is out, off leash, they run,
they sniff; but even beagles miss the scent
of elephant, buried long ago. These days,
Dad, you worry how your left hand shakes.
Let it shake, I say. Just don’t miss
the sun—like sequins on their coats—and know
I hold tightly to the string, still tied to you.
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