Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast. I'm Emanuel Vaughn Lee, executive editor of Emergence

Magazine, located on the unseated ancestral lands of the Coast Mewalk people of present-day

Marin County. Each week, we feature a new interview, narrated essay, or story, exploring the threads connecting

ecology, culture, and spirituality.

Acclaimed poet, Camille T. Dungee bears witness to an encounter between man and elephant.

In an effort to make sense of a world in which so much has been lost,

this poem offers us the opportunity to step into a moment,

where past harm gives way to an expansive recognition of love.

The way she holds her huge limb forward, patient and expectant, while the slight man untethers the old prosthetic,

a cage of metal, polyurethane, and canvas large enough that I could stand inside.

Sweet elephant, waiting as a man sets aside the artificial leg, then turns back to the nylon sleeve that cups her nub. Rolling that down like a

lover or a mother removes underwear from a body they adore. That gently, that disinterested in causing harm.

That dear elephant steady all this time on her three remaining legs, while the man

strokes the nub of her mind blasted one. It's pucker scar, a forever wound that reminds me of

the chest of a woman who has refused reconstructive surgery after losing one breast to the scalpel.

The scar, like a nipple, stretched into a grin. I want to compare the look of that nub to something you will

understand, America. But there's no way to say it other than this. When she was seven months old,

the elephant walked on a landmine. After that, some people wanted to kill her.

How could she survive, doubled over and using her trunk as a crutch,

leaning always on trees?

Put her out of her misery, they said.

But look where she landed instead.

...