Written piece
JUMBO DILEMMA
N Prasanna
India
About this piece
This poetry was inspired by a recent incident involving an elephant that was shifted from its erstwhile abode which was a temple to the wilderness. The vain human one-upmanship over nature at times seeps through the skin of the wild creatures without even their realisation.
JUMBO DILEMMA
There he was the Mastodon
Roaming the Wilderness but not in Gay Abandon
Worry hung heavily in its eyes
Troubled it was by thoughts not so nice
Look it did at its mother complainingly
The mother looked at its calf yearningly
Imprisoned I am in this impregnable canopy
The elephant calf had just begun its Litany
Adamant grass snags my trunk
Feeling I am as if locked inside a trunk
Congested Bamboo shoots hold my Legs in a twine
There seemed to be no end to the little Jumbo's whine
Oh, You ignorant soul sighed the mother
Even as the calf shook hither and thither
This Verdant Wilderness was forever our abode
Slush, mud, and foliage had been our only robe
Alas you realise, The temple is the Prison
Escaped we have from which, to our Habitation