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The Ivory Tower

by Lesley Scoble

A lone elephant is following a ghost herd’s trail across her native lands looking for her family.


The tears flowed down along the deep lines of her face,
causing chasmic rivers in searching streams. 

She remembered others of her race. 
She had travelled far, following a ghost herd—
looking for them. 

Only to discover this white mountain of tusks 
in the moon shadow of Kilimanjaro. 
Noble tusks jumbled together like a game of matchsticks. 
Would taking one cause them all to fall and tumble down? 
No. 

They clung together in a hard, last, fast embrace—
reminding remnants of the face 
and the face 
and the face… 

The place where they belonged.

Clasping tethered tight, 
Curving, hooked in a giant hugging heap. 
Stacked. 
Packed high and deep. 

An ivory tower. 
A pyre. 

Where evil men bid and bought and hid 
the bones of her elephantine family. 
This was not what she sought. 

She bellows—a loud trumpeting call,
A beseeching blare in the darkest hour before the dawn. 
Carrying beyond expansive lands. 
Echoes exploring sound,
rebounding around her native grounds. 

Only silence answers. 

The waking sun rouses in the East. 
The great beast turns, distraught at the unnatural pile, and looks ahead. 
Across the yawning Savannah. 

The distance beckons. She sees a tiny tree—
a speck at miles hence. 
Perhaps? 

In its shade, another great herd might be? 
Another family? 
Another ghost herd? 
Are they all dead? 
Am I the last? 

Her heavy footsteps mark a lonely path as she treads towards the far-off tree. 

Somewhere in man’s town, music escapes through an open window. Someone is playing an old piano—lithe fingers making musical rippling arpeggios upon her ancestors.


—Lesley Scoble, 2022

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THE IVORY TOWER is written in participation with the W3 Poetry Prompt. My thanks to David Ben Alexander, and to Brittan Benson for her Prose Poetry Prompt of Love; or Elephants