The Used Book

A poem by
Jennifer Houle

is the link links me to memory
after a year of following that first lead from Brad
regarding Ganesh, Ganapati,
the night he tried to help me believe
in an elephant raised as a devotee,
when I told him I'd been moved to tears
by a silly documentary, not knowing
how to feel so deeply, wanting an easy out. And, so:

Om gam etc for days, almost irreverently,
flirting with gods as old and powerful as stars.

In Charlottetown, an elephant's head with
removable tusks, a book plumbing the god
for his Mahabarata.

What could I learn? What piece of data, bit of wisdom
might explain the heart seizing, involuntary tears for days
when I remembered elephants in rows, passing a dusty tusk
from trunk to trunk?

A year of following links, chanting myself to sleep:
Om gam ganapati eh, waking from untranslatable dreams
of three-trunked blue elephants in distant galaxies.

Months passed and all my hand-carved renderings got dusty,
the trunk broke off my small, pink, glass Ganesh.

And now, this ordered thing, reminding me
how long I want to travel, how

hungry I will always be for one more link,
the sustenance of even one new way to love my mother
through her broken memories of who I was
to wrap my tiny arms around her legs, to be so
strong I might give birth to legends, nurse

life-giving light storms through their pains,
and forget nothing.

Live to circle back to where
I started, slowly, unafraid, deliberate
as nature.