Story/Poem text

In the rain, when nobody is here but the elephants, the wide round pool overcomes its low edge and the ground becomes one with the fountain. The pond occupies this strange glade, creeps under benches, waters the trees, and covers the steps.

Flooded with his shoes half submerged in the trembling pond, he regretted leaving his umbrella at home. As a child, he had often gone in the rain without one, but of late he had a habit of carrying all means of weather prevention with him. Why had he been silly enough to forget it today? He was seldom silly – he consciously avoided it. The unseemly sensation of rain sliding down his scalp set him into a state of vague thoughts.

He did not often think alone in public and entirely sensitized to the experience, he was surprised at the fluidity of the art that filled his thoughts – like bleeding out. He tried frantically to control the flow of ideas building on ideas at such a rate that he could not organize them – or even be aware of them all.

It seemed there were two boys in grey raincoats pestering the elephants. He thought they must find it funny to see elephants in a place like this, animals in the city. He wished they would be quiet – they were disturbing the spirituality of this place, this oasis in a stormcloud.

He imagined seeing an elephant’s ear twitch - nonsense of course. It must have been one of the boys’ jackets flapping as they pretended to ride the two little elephants. It occurred to him that he had gotten old and lost imagination. But I’ve always been young, I know nothing else - he answered himself; unable to grasp that he may not be anymore, trying to reason with the other half of his mind.

He was distracted by the virile sound of the fountain, compounded by a million individually tuned raindrops; it becomes a roar that feels as stable as silence. When he turned back, the two little elephants with their riders were gone - dissolved in the heavy rain, and he could not be sure if they had ever been there at all.