The Elephant of Paris

And all the dreams were on the floor
and it felt that they would have been in my lap.  Like outcroppings of 
fresh ginger-root suggesting a running boy with a sac of burlap in his hand,
and he himself dreams perhaps, dreams not that he is running, skimming 
along
like a smooth stone free of all worries, no, but he dreams that he is in
France and has had to abandon his elephant at a train station

and the journey presses on him in search of his loved ones at the frontier
and he is inconsolable, “Even though in France they are kind and they
feed stray elephants from their back door, and sometimes even
take them inside don’t they?”  And forever the parting look in those mild eyes
so deep with kindness and understanding as the potato boy, 
for that is what he is called, wakes dumbfounded and
perplexed and then he remembered the French country-side as seen
through rain spattered glass -- his train speeding South. To puzzle

it all together he needed air and a little less sunlight in a space grown
wide.