rise on their heels like begging dogs,
squatting on their redwood legs,
holding out majestic paws --

watching them rise with astonishing grace
onto the forests of their feet,
watching as the middle elephant,

led by a trainer in sequin bikini,
begins to sway its hide to a flamenco beat.
The great sad proudness of the body,

mute absurdity, the proven grace of it.
Also the silent gravity of touch.
Also the second elephant, hooking the sinewy tip of its trunk

into the slender rising ribbon of the first one's 
tail, the third 
into the ribbon of the second's tail.

Meanwhile women in bright silks,
skirts the colors of crepe-paper roses,
yellow violet, pumpkin violet,

flip and bend, flashing their skirts high -- 
(the teenaged girl behind us hisses, they oughtta 
be ashamed of theyselves --)

now the skirts are gone,
carried from the ring like wilted blossoms;
now ropes have lowered themselves from the sky;

the women
begin to climb.

Ashamed? Of what?
Doesn't every one of us
dream of living in those bodies?

-- in the necessary sweat beneath their arms,
in the coiled hungers of their cunts? 
There in the bodies at work becoming 

more than themselves,
while also remaining, like the elephants,
relentlessly themselves...

Loops through the air, forward and backward flight.