Old Elephants Always Know

A poem about doodling, maybe more

The hand draws a doodle
Across hardly fastidious notes.
Pictures fill the margins
Taking shape as the sharp pencil dances between shaking digits.
A semi-circle blossoms into a flower
A line of triangles transforms into a travel-weathered sail
On tragically forlorn schooner
Missing all but one of its men
Still tied to the mast with wax in his ears.
Esses seem to snake forth from forked tongues
Becoming snarling beasts the world has never known.
Inside the nimble mind
Which flamencos like the flying Bic
There is no grand plan
No idea that a parabola will soon become a banana-fisted bonobo.
There is a class going on, yes.
But to avoid it is divine,
For a nap in class
Full of the “fuck it”s of rebellious abandon
Can give more rest than one thousand sleeps.
There is a war going on outside, yes.
I am getting too old for shaggy elephants
Whose bush-eyebrows give them a crazed stare.