Kallar elephant corridor, Western Ghats

by Ajay Kumar

Some just came to drink
across a table of water,
others just left,
pudding-pipes in their way,

a calf sniffs to the side,
alone a bull’s tusks
point to his raised trunk,

movement of myriad grey.
A flycatcher, a blue of his own,
excavated in the sky
from the sun, rests on a Neem.

Soap pods in patches. Snaky
trunks smell a cardamom memory.
The ones that came to drink leave
for wild plantains, more come
across the water again.