After the witch sucked out my bones, I traveled all over looking for branches to replace them.

Sometimes I traveled with other people. Often I traveled alone.

I had been traveling alone for a while
when I came across a cow (a "cow" is a female elephant)

crying. Her eyes were dry, the tears--great, fat drops
the size of sparrows--falling instead

from her ears. Her ears were not elephant ears;
rather, elephant-shaped
human ears. While deaf to the paw falls
of lions, they were finely tuned

to heartbreak. When I was a kid, or more of one, I wondered
why elephant tears were so special. Watching the cow wipe her ear
with her trunk, balancing a tear like a penny wobbling
tails-down, I saw that the tear was special

not because of it's extraordinary way of falling
from her ear, but because of its ordinary way
of falling at music from a passing car, soft, fleeting---