Two Short Poems

For Big Al
We pass by in a line
as old elephants do
one eye on the dead one
by the side of the mud hole.
An old elephant dies, the rest of us
move forward in the rut of habitual turning
and one by one we too will kneel down
for the final time, unaware that the rest will pass
with a remembering eye on a dead elephant
kneeling by a mud hole.