after Yehuda Amichai
The diameter of a circus ring is forty-two feet,
an arena large enough to contain three elephants,
three performance stands, two trainers, and
a ringmaster. And inside this ring, each elephant,
upon her designated turn, turns circles around
the ringmaster as he cracks commands with his
ceremonial whip. And no more than ninety feet away,
eight other traveling elephants wait in a steel-
barred cage of insufficient measure. And in this cage,
they hear the cries of their sisters as they perform
a shuffle around the ring, their soft-soled feet scuffing
dirt into the circus air. The caged elephants shift and
shoulder each other, bellow back, setting off a call
and answer of all elephants, a shared chain that
becomes wild notes rising and falling outside and
inside the big top, where the master’s sharp whistle
sends children scuttling closer to their mothers, and
the mothers circle their little ones with rounded arms
as all the elephants repeat their circle of song. And
the song rings and rings and lingers even after
the canvas walls come down.
Gail Braune Comorat is a founding member of Rehoboth Beach Writers’ Guild. She is the author of a poetry chapbook, Phases of the Moon (Finishing Line Press), and has been published in Grist, Adanna, Gargoyle, Mudfish, and The Widows’ Handbook. She received a 2011 Delaware Division of the Arts Fellowship Grant for Emerging Poet, and in 2015, a DDOA Grant for Established Poet.