by Julia Griffin

For Mary

“Wrinkles reveal whether elephants are left- or right-trunked, study finds …
The team say a left-trunker—which scoops objects towards the left side of its body—has more
wrinkles and longer whiskers on the left side of its trunk, with whiskers on the right worn down by
more frequent contact with the ground.”
—The Guardian

Her mother and myself are simple, honest megafauna.
We make our sludge ourselves, don’t look to others for a sauna:
We trumpet when appropriate, perform our scoops and sprinkles,
And never even thought about the numbers of our wrinkles;
But now it seems we’re guilty of an all-time tusker-clunker:
We’ve somehow foisted on the herd a sinister LEFT-TRUNKER.

Of course she went to swishing class (the cost was something frightful);
We tried to stop her eating till she took a rightful biteful;
We wouldn’t let her wallow in a swamp where people knew her,
Whose numbers were quite rapidly becoming few, then fewer;
We chose at last to hide her in a sort of jungle bunker,
And prayed that there she’d cease to be a troublesome left-trunker.

We tried so hard to fight such aberrations of behaving:
We’d heard some say it’s sorcery, this crazy mirror-waving;
But gradually we came to first acceptance, then bravado,
Then honest pride: our calf, the pachydermic Leonardo!
And now we say: come raise your trunks and drink, until you’re drunker,
The untruncated future of our trusty, true left-trunker!