The heat is juddering the panorama awake!

All the world is shimmer and shake

standing in front of the elephant parade

thundering down the desert scape

away from the secretive hunters of ivory,

away from the circus and drunken street clowns with their

whips and prods and chains.

Rise up, great ones, once again!

The Moab tribe is calling worldwide

for the elephants to assemble an unbroken line

heads shaking, trumpeting resistance,

circling the wounded, regathering the children,

trampling the profits the abusers have made

and setting in sandstone a justice parade.

This poem, after a long hiatus, continues my project of writing poems inspired by famous sandstone formations in Arches National Monument, Moab, Utah. The Parade of Elephants formation brought me back to last summer when my kids and I visited an elephant refuge preserve in northern Thailand and we encountered first-hand elephants rescued from abusive contexts.