The author of many collections of poetry, Jean Valentine has received such honors as the National Book Award, being selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets and the Wallace Stevens Award... More >
Want more poems?Subscribe to ourPoem-A-Day emails.
In the elephant field
tall green ghost elephants
with your cargo of summer leaves
at night I heard you breathing at the window
Don't you ever think I'm not crying
since you're away from me
Don't ever think I went free
At first the goodbye had a lilt to it—
maybe just a couple of months—
but it was a beheading.
Ghost elephant,
reach down,
cross me over—