The Elephant in the Kitchen

Richard Harrison

Richard Harrison

This work is reprinted with permission from FreeFall, a local literary magazine with a mandate to encourage the voices of new, emerging, and established Canadian writers while providing a platform to be proud of for their quality work.

On a shelf in the hutch beside our kitchen table
            sits an ivory work passed down through my wife's family. 
 
It is a marvel of the sculptor's hand, 
             a fragment of tusk fashioned into a ball within 
                          a ball within a sphere and set upon a stick
              like the world upon a scepter -- 
 
                        each glove spins, a story unspools. 
 
All art is its medium's final message. 
                                              The elephant is long since gone. 
 
Still, every time we eat at that table, 
             my wife thinks about the burden of having the sculpture, 
                        versus what it would mean to throw the last bit of the animal away. 
 
Her great-grandfather bought it in Vancouver's Chinatown in 1959
for the price a Saskatchewan farmer on his first vacation in decades could afford, 
                        such was the state of the world. 
 
                         What is an elephant? 
 
In the story, the first blind man, feeling the tail, says, 
                         It is thick and ropy like a mighty snake. 
 
Feeling the leg, the second says, 
                         It is sturdy as a column, a beast in the shape of a tree. 
 
The third presses his ear to the belly and says, 
                         The elephant has the ribs of a boat, 
                                  and its heart beats like a temple drum. 
 
The king of the fable loves these sightless visions of the beast, 
              and even more the arguments that follow between the blind observers, 
and he laughs the way someone does when 
                                they get their money's worth of fun. 
 
But the court artist says to the monarch in his own dining hall, 
              Open your eyes, your majesty, the elephant is raw material. 
Carve it to the world's delight and your kingdom's profit. 
               I have the tools. Let me show you. 
 
 

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