On Youtube.com I discover a video shot
by India’s caring Coast Guard who found
an elephant way out in the middle of the
Indian sea struggling not to sink down in

To the depths and with with huge trouble
the crew managed to bring that creature
under tow and attach great straps around
and summon 2 massive cargo helicopters

To air lift the great heavy weight of that
largest of all land animals up then over
all that sea it had somehow floated upon
and across for its rendezvous with help &

Here we all are on planet of many oceans
water world really it rains & then it snows
again and we are more water than anything
else sloshing between being dust & being

Dust again blowing away to nowhere lives
passing kaleidoscopic flash, transportation
& transmigration multiplying in very selves
back to land back to life so many selves &

Who can say what is real except reaching on
out to help all those struggling sinking selves.

 

James Van Looy has been a fixture in Boston’s poetry venues since the 1970s. He is a member of Cosmic Spelunker Theater and has run poetry workshops for Boston area homeless people at Pine Street Inn and St. Francis House since 1992. Van Looy leads the Labyrinth Creative Movement Workshop, which his Labyrinth titled poems are based on. His work appears weekly in Oddball Magazine.