Elementary
–Naomi Shihab Nye

At the 100-year-old National Elk Refuge

near Jackson Hole, we might ask,

How long does an elk live?

Who’s an old elk here?

We’d like to spend time

with an elder elk please.

Tell us how to balance our lives

on this hard edge of human mean,

mean temperatures, what we do and don’t

want to mean.

Closing the door

to the news will only make you

stupid, snapped my friend

who wanted everyone to know as much

as she did. I’m hiding in old school books

with information we never used yet.

Before I drove, before I flew,

before the principal went to jail.

Sinking my eyes into tall wooden

window sashes, dreaming of light

arriving from far reaches,

our teacher as shepherds,

school a vessel of golden hope,

you could lift your daily lesson

in front of your eyes,

stare hard and think,

this will take me

somewhere. O histories of India,

geological formations of Australia,

ancient poetries of China, Japan,

someday we will be aligned in a place

of wisdom, together.

Red deer, wapiti, running elk rising

above yellow meadows at sundown.

An elk bows her head. In the company

of other elk, she feels at home.

And we are lost on the horizon now,

clumsy humanity,

deeper into the next century than we

can even believe,

and they will not speak to us