ELEPHANT MEMORY

The Arab traders’ Serendib,

Walpole’s Serendip,

that Land of Kandy !

The Sacred Tooth Relic of Sidhartha—

rescued from his funeral pyre,

hidden in the hair of a Princess,

to reside on a golden lotus blossom

in the smallest of seven caskets.

Annually, at the Esala Perahera Festival,

it rides through Kandy

on giant elephant back,

midst dancers,

processional pachyderms,

two by two,

each pair painted,

robed the same.

Each pair proud

as if possessed of

the secret of the centuries.

Though the “Zoological Park”

where I witnessed

the reenactment was filthy,

the elephants

danced enchantingly,

processed as if kings of the world,

not a one at all clumsy.

Perhaps they were pleased

to rise above the muck.

Perhaps they remembered

their part in

the Esala Perahera Festival.

When I had “morning tea”

at the Hotel Mt. Lavinia

(where the Raj is still in flower),

my coffee tasted of parched peanuts.

I smiled in memory of,

in honor to,

the Giant Elephant of the Sacred Tooth,

the pachyderm pairs.

by Lynn Veach Sadler

Former college president, Dr. Lynn Veach Sadler, editor, poet, fiction/nonfiction writer, and playwright, has published widely in academics and creative writing. She and her husband have traveled around the world five times; she was writing all the way. Sadler has a full-length poetry collection and novel forthcoming; has six chapbooks published; and has won The Pittsburgh Quarterly’s Hay Prize, tied for first in Kalliope’s Elkind Contest, was a runner-up for the Spoon River Poetry Review Editor’s Prize Contest, and won the Poetry Society of America’s Hemley Award and Asphodel’s Poetry Contest.  See her story “Going the Last Mile” on page 142 of the print version of The Taylor Trust.