Homecoming

Huge and exotic, India lumbered into my small world
the summer I was six;
a carny selling rides
on a broken-down circus elephant
looked like a maharaja to me.
I begged for days until Dad gave in.

Riding that elephant,
so far above the world I knew,
all of India was mine.
The sweet bronze bells on her harness
rang only for me
and I dreamt of silk and jasmine,
despite the itchy blanket beneath my legs,
the elephant smell, the nearby traffic—
a poor man's gift to his only daughter.

Years later, in the airport,
a woman hands me a baby girl,
wrapped in an old quilt,
three days coming across the water,
India to Atlanta.
Black eyes, elegant fingers,
strongheart to come so far alone,
home at last.
I held you, thinking of that elephant,
and wondered if my father watched over your flight.

"Picture 2" Photographs by Adam Jeffries