As kids we would pick thorns from the roses,

and stick them with what stickiness was left

– or with some extra spit – to our noses.

 

Then we were rhinoceroses

planting tracks, roaring across the savannah,

trampling the boundaries of the African front lawn;

 

thorn down, something approaching elephants

whose trunks didn’t swing, just tended to slip

off when the sweat began to run in the sun.

 

But sometimes, incredibly, they held on,

and you lost track of that thunderous bulk,

each leg a tree trunk, the submarine gut,

 

the tender impression of the feet;

you’d remember them only when the back

of a hand moved subconsciously across,

 

wiping the sight from the face of the earth.