by Randel McCraw Helms
In Thailand, aged, blinded elephants transport
At the piano of volunteer Paul Barton,
Whose love of animals and music will
Alter your saddened heart. At a sanctuary
For abused and damaged working elephants
He has placed an old upright in a meadow.
When he plays her favorite Beethoven, Lam Duan
(“Yellow-Flowered Tree”), her crusted eyes streaming,
Will slowly pace from the bush, trunk tip testing
Each unsighted step before her like a white cane.
Standing by the unseen instrument, entranced
By the sonata called Pathetique, she will sway
To its rhythms, roused to a purity of love
Our own poor clouded eyes may never know.
Her friend Romsai, partially blind, prefers Bach.
The architectural simplicities
Of the Twenty-Fifth Goldberg move him
To a rhythmical trance every god would envy.
While Barton plays, rapt Romsai sways
In a sarabande of elephantine joy.
Whose heart would not yearn for an elephant
Soul in the face of such divine delight?
Randel McCraw Helms is retired from Arizona State University’s English Department. His recent poems have appeared in such places as “Dappled Things,” “Blood & Bourbon,” and “Silkworm.”