Friday, May 09, 2008

Elecelephony

Once there was an elephant
Who tried to use the telephant

--"Eletelephony" by Laura E. Richards

but now we know they talk by infrasound—
and pachy gossip travels underground,
vibrations picked up through their giant toes.

Reception’s best on ground that’s dense and rocky.
Herds of elephants will sometimes jockey
to be over subterranean flows

of hardened stone. They hang out there and listen
to the oldest land-line in transmission—
or they used to. Guess what’s coming next:

they’ve super-sized the buttons on the cell-phones,
no wires to tangle trunks. So now it’s well-known,
elephants send messages in text.



elephant image
cell phone image
Collection available! Knocking from Inside

5 comments:

Granny Smith said...

This is a wonderful bit of whimsy!

GreenishLady said...

Oh yes! I enjoyed this a lot. Thanks.

I,Me,Myself said...

Delightful piece of verse!

Anonymous said...

...excellent... and thrz no monthly bills or trying to remember to bring yr cell wherever you go... recently saw a a program on pbs on elephants.. it was very enlightening and they happen to discuss this very thing... another thing that puzzled me was the fact that when one of them died along the way they aways went back to that same place over and over to remember....

Crafty Green Poet said...

I enjoyed this, the marvels of elephant communication are many...