At sixty-five, an elephant knows
her end is near.
The quadrant of sloping, wide
teeth at the back
of her jaw has pushed forward.
Diamond-shaped
molars break off, fall out. Once,
the matriarch
of a herd, she cannot grind bark,
twigs, root.
She dies of starvation.
I found a set of elephant molars
in the Zambian bush,
Like a sack of flour, it weighs
more than
five pounds. It rests on my desk
like a skull in some
Flemish painting to remind me
I am aging.
Marsha Blitzer’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The American Journal of Poetry, Atlanta Review, The Banyan Review, Cleaver Magazine, and elsewhere. In July 2023, Finishing Line Press published her chapbook of poetry, Malaya Bronnaya, based on her work as an attorney in Russia after the Soviet Union broke up.
