POEM: Marsh Elephants

fragile herd,
living in the space between
Kilimanjaro’s broad shoulders
[too broad to see without a panning view]
on an oasis of glacial melt
runoff that grows a plume of vivid green
amid the red-brown savannah lands

where dust devils daily form

below the equatorial belt

and when the runoff runs out

there’ll be no time to run