World Elephant Day

is observed every year on 12 August. The day is observed to raise awareness, and bring attention towards the plight of elephants

World Elephant Day is an international initiative co-founded by the Elephant Reintroduction Foundation and Patricia Sims, the Founding President of World Elephant Society. On this day, they encourage individuals and organizations around the world to work towards elephant conservation.

 

Lessons from Elephants

much to learn
from pachyderms

who listen, not knowing,
but hearing, understand

and despite giant size,
display proportionate grace

with seemingly
infinite memory,

make pilgrimages
to show compassion

ignoring time’s sand,
journeying to distant lands
-st

The Room of Cards

Welcome to the Room of Cards –
my favourite room. I’ll show you round.
See all the faces, looking out,
not smiling. No, we’re not sure why.
Maybe a teeth thing? Teeth were
threatening?

All plastic? Yes. Yes, I know –
such wealth. Imagine how it must have been.
All found by plastic miners, and brought here
for their historical significance.

They are significant. And beautiful.

This case puts them into context:
a bag. Yes, plastic, hasn’t lasted well.
Inside, a smaller bag, a purse –
all plastic. Lots of cards, but only
this one with a face on it. A plastic pen.
A plastic wrapper, contents unidentified.

I know. They must have bathed in plastic,
frittered it, squandered it.
Unimaginable wealth…

Anyhow: this is my favourite. See?
A little girl. We don’t get many children here,
but there she is. The word is “zoo” –
who knows what that means? Yes!
Well done. A place for animals.

Think what she must have seen.
An elephant. A lion, perhaps.
Giraffe. And now we look at her,
across the centuries.

It makes me tingle, just to think of it.

-Sarah Connor

 

The Elephantquake

Elephantquake bossed a vast forest.
no rain, all lakes, tanks, ponds,
water holes arid. It thirsts
It searched for water.

It knows of a hidden lake
always full and goes there
to save itself. After five nights
it revelled and splashed in the lake.

Daily it marched upon moonhares,
maimed and wounded them,
on its route to the lake.

One day moonhares met
to save themselves
from the elephantquake
Some said “Abandon this place.”

Others “It’s our ancient home.
Let’s find an alternative.
Let’s see if we can scare off
rampage of elephantquake.”

Some of them said, “We know
of a trick that works
with elephantquake.
we need a sharp person.

A moonhare has a message
for elephantquake. It says
“I come from Moon who doesn’t
want you supping lake as bound

there you kills and maim hundreds
of hares. Lake is forbidden.
Return to your forest home.
“But where’s this Moon, your home? asks

elephantquake “In this lake.
It consoles the survivors
of your rampage.” “Then, let me see him,”
requests the elephantquake.

“Come alone with me, I will
show you.” Moonhare takes it one
night to shows Moon’s silvery
reflection in the lake, says

“Here it is, my home, the Moon.
Lost in meditation.
Move quietly, salute it.
Don’t disturb it and bring wrath.”

Elephantquake sees it as real,
salutes it, leaves quietly,
returns to its forest home.
Hares heave sigh in relief.

-Paul Brookes

Bios And Links

-Amy Raeburn

is originally from north-east Scotland and studied English at the University of Aberdeen. Amy’s poetry has appeared in publications including Cencrastus, Three Drops from a Cauldron, The Poetry Shed, Re-side and Southlight. Amy works and lives in Cheshire in the UK and is a member of the Blaze Poetry Society Stanza in Mid-Cheshire.

-Stephanie Bowgett

is one of the founder members of The Albert Poets in Huddersfield. They have been organising monthly readings and a variety of workshops for twenty six years till temporarily halted by COVID. Her most recent book, “A Poor Kind of Memory” was published by Calder Valley Poetry  https://caldervalleypoetry.com

Climate Change

Abecedary

‘E’ is for…  ‘extinction’. It used to be for ‘Elephant’ but poachers killed them all off in their ironclad greed for ivory. It was said elephants never forgot, but now none remain left to remember. And mankind knows exactly where the elephants’ graveyards are to be found. Wherever we dumped mounds of their tuskless carcasses.

‘P’ is- was, for ‘Penguin’. Until their population melted away with the polar ice cap that sailed off into the sunset, leaving them sunk without trace.

‘T’ was for ‘Tiger’, harvested for the supposed medicinal powers of its organs. Mankind still got sicker and sicker all the same. Both in body and mind.

‘D’ was for ‘Dolphin’. For all humans’ supposed rapport with our favourite marine mammalian cousins, we couldn’t invent tuna nets that didn’t snag dolphins too. We used to regard them as therapeutic when we swam with them in their briny realm. But all the while we were toxifying their habitat, so that their fish diet perished and they starved to death in Davy Jones’ empty food locker.

‘S’ was for ‘Seal’, the ones often depicted balancing a ball on their snouts. Delightfully entertaining us as kids in circuses, yet no playful rump persisted in us as adults. Since we culled their infant pups with bludgeons, cudgels and clubs. Wiped from the face of the earth, with nothing more than red blood smears on white snow.

This had the knock-on effect of thinning out the food supply for their natural predators the Killer ‘W’ that used to stand for ‘Whales’. Their existence was further compromised by global warming’s effects and noise pollution of desperate oil exploration both. Subverting their sonar direction so that they kept beaching themselves. Expiring faster than they could be harpooned for their wealth of blubbery products, both practical and exclusive, beloved of us landlubbers.

‘Z’ was for ‘Zebra’, now permanently residing in the unhappy hunting grounds, stripped of their prized stripes. But also through the system of man-made dams which caused the soil of their homelands to dry up and took their natural predator Leo the Lion along with them into oblivion. Pride comes before a fall it is said and we committed regicide in the kingdom of the savannas.

‘M’ was for ‘Monkey’, our closest living relative and one which we systematically extirpated, through our epidemic fears of a species short hop for disease transmission. Our paranoia knew no limit since we pressed the same relentless logic to take wing, as we emptied the skies of avian life for good measure.

‘F’ was for ‘Fox’, quick and brown at the heart of learning to write our alphabet. Well they were boundlessly trespassing our cities bold as brass, so the outcome was inevitable really. And that was even after the English had legislated to prevent hunting them with dogs. The rampant poison employed for the task was far more efficient. And environmentally devastating.

‘C’ was for ‘Cow’, which along with pigs and sheep previously had formed our staple domestic stable of meat. But when we fed parts of the trinity to each other, turning these ruminants into carnivores, they became soft in the head, couldn’t stand on their own four feet. So subsequently we, the ultimate omnivore, had to pass them up on the menu.

‘B’ the letter that actually sounded the name of its creature, well it now only stands for ‘bafflement’ or ‘befuddled’, since they were the first fauna to foreshadow the fatal trend. We didn’t even notice their disappearance until there was no more honey to be had for love nor money. The last time life was ever sweet.

The decline in human numbers caused by the diminution of our food supply and the impoverishment of the planet, both paled by comparison to the true devolution our species suffered. The degrading of our minds. For as these animals were expunged from life, what pictures could we fill our primary reading books with which to inculcate our children the building blocks of language? Cockroaches, hyenas, sharks and vultures, the perennial survivors of the animal kingdom, those best adapted to feast on the misery of the weaker beasts, are inappropriate for an infant’s reading primer. It would yield them nightmarish associations, which while maybe more fitting to our current disposition, mothers deemed it better just to let learning slide in its entirety. Muteness was the sole maternal birthright to pass on.

So gradually our children’s imaginations began to shrink and wither on the vine. They had no images to append to their words, to try and colour their thoughts in order to express themselves to others. Their alphabets broke down, unable even to construct words for them. Our language became as extinct as the animals which used to denizen its vibrant embrace. I am the last speaker to record all this. I composed all this centuries ago as I hung on to the vestige of my mind’s creative ability and foretold what would follow in my wake. Now I too have become extinct, both in body and heritage, since not one of the meagre generations which succeed me possesses any ability to read and understand these words.

-Marc Nash (from his 3rd collection of flash fiction “Long Stories Short”)

Bios And Links

-Marc Nash

has had 5 collections of flash fiction and 6 novels published. “Three Dreams In The Key Of G” was shortlisted for the 2018 “Not The Booker Prize” and his latest novel “Stories We Tell Our Children” was published last month. He lives and works in London, in the freedom of expression realm. 

World Lion Day

 

“Forsaken Children”
(Raanana, September 23, 2017)

The child is taught
When there is no help
God is our help,
When there is no hope
God is our hope,
When there is no redemption
God is our redemption.
These are honeyed words
To hear on sabbath after new years,
They succor us until we need them to be true
And then they desert us
Just like God did long ago
And we cry out from our crosses
With our last breaths like His Son
Why have You forsaken Me?
The truth is it’s our beliefs that crucify us,
Better to die like a lion roaring
Against the jackals of death
Or an eagle falling silently
From the sky
Than like forsaken children
Waiting for redemption.
-(c) Mike Stone, 2017

“Rage“
(Raanana, June 16, 2017)

No thing engenders pathos
As an old lion roaring rage
Against the young jackals around him
Except perhaps
One that does not rage.
-(c) Mike Stone, 2017