Ross LewAllen and the Elephants of Morning

Silver Mastodon by Ross LewAllen

Some legends say that the elephant is our closest relation to the spirit world.

His main and most accentuated virtue, patience. But -- of what use is this in a world such as ours, a world that is always on the move restlessly from one place to another?

The beauty of the elephant is that it cannot see its tail. It must move ever forward into the illimitable and indefinite future. Doing so, the great, gray eminence blends with the low lying clouds of which it is a herd member.

I am reminded of these things as I think of my friend  Ross LewAllen, my cohort in laughter and occasionally tears over these past 40 years wherein we have both taken counsel from the elephant. Let's promise to be patient with each other. We did. We do. We still do. Because I do not feel him gone. I feel he is here, watching, waiting, like the slow moving clouds.

I remember when he returned from Africa and had elephant visions, most of them things he'd seen with his beloved daughter Laura.

Elephant

I watched a mother elephant

gently lay her tusk

over the back

of her baby

She carefully moved her trunk

from the left side to the right side

of the baby's body

I felt the powerful sense

of touch at work

Dusty gray

moving in the night

Kilimanjaro's healing water

fills their favorite swamp

The elephant's night pace

is tranquil.

--Ross LewAllen

I have seen Ross fly like an egret, white on blue. And I have seen him move like a man on fire. But mostly I see him moving among clouds, in a herd of gray, slow-paced beauties going to where they're going without haste, one step at a time.

Last night, in a dream, the question came up, "Will there be coffee in heaven?"

This morning I have an answer -- sitting in the chair in the sun that Ross liked to sit in while, together, we studied the lilies of the pond. 

There are slow moving elephants pacing the sky and coffee such as they have in heaven.

Ross is the witness in my heart.