‘Five Shooter’ Middle Finger -Elephant

Elephant

Middle Finger

Longest reach tip

Curve to anchor a hold

A bit like an elephant

Specialised nose

A proboscis for asking probing questions

To this add picking up anything

Even small objects, with a pinch

Delicately

Spay hose, worlds largest drinking straw

For dust bathing too

Above and beyond

Just the sense of smell

Up periscope to scent danger

Quite good as a trumpet

Just saying, or warning

Elephants add articulated touch

A trunk for a hand, when you have none

(Only four legs like tree trunks)

Reaching out, greeting, holding

Even using branches

Scratching tools for hard to reach places

Most memorable feature

A nose that is so much more

For eating and drinking

Living trunk to mouth

Unless you’re a trophy hunter

Or ivory dealer, then tusks

Are the featured attraction

But to people who harbour #thekindness

The trunk and the ivory

Are to be marvelled at, belonging

On its living owner

Elephant

Largest living land animal

Tallest pachyderm

Here we will stay with Africa

Loxodonta Africana

Largest of them all

The Bush and Asian species

Will have poems of their own

African elephants

With their oversized cooling ears

Personal fans, keeping a cool head

Flapping heat dissipators

Roam the savannas and plains

Herded together in family groups

The cows and young

Stay mostly in natal groups

With matriarchs

While the young bulls

And patriarchs

Mostly cruise in bachelor mode

Except when nature call

And the bulls ‘Musth’ wander

Older bulls walking even more

Such a long way

Searching out fertile females

A bit crazy, single-minded

Walk any distance, overproducing

A testosterone mahout

Drives them on relentlessly

Stay out of the way

Aggression will be used

On anything in between

The bull and his goal

And after the course

22 months after - 95 weeks

Longest gestation of any mammal

The new generation is born

With plenty of aunties

And group protection

To increase their chance

Of reaching adulthood

Another link in the chain of trunks

Unbroken

And ears, and tusks

Hear them roar

Vocalising in many ways

With specialised pharynx

And larynx

Modifying their nostrils

Gives them low sounds or high

From rolling grumbles, low frequency

To high pitch trumpet blasts

Pharyngeal pouch resonates

Creating seismic travelling sounds

Long range communication

Where we need radio

Few animals would dare

Not to give way to a bull

Especially a herd

Amazing and majestic

Care for their own, profound

Instantly recognisable sentience

Leave these feeling creatures

Free to be

Elephants

As for millions of years

They have wandered the plains

And now gone past ranges

The perceived value of their tusks

And human encroachment

Has overseen their decline

The shooting must stop

With projectiles

And must start

With shutters

(And the digital equivalent)

Take nothing from them

No end of images only

Tick off Number 2 of the #newbig5

Feel the exhilaration of not harming

But still capturing, continuously

So another African icon

Who we evolved alongside

Claiming exclusive sentience

For ourselves, now realising

Untrue

Can remain a feature

Of the plains

And be recognised

In the fellowship

Of the sentients

Living their social lives

As we live ours

Once again

Alongside

See www.newbig5.org