The old one comes out of the trees with his tusks
nearly to the ground, the way they get
when nothing has stopped them for fifty years.
The young one is already in the open.
He is an adult. He is not a child. He is the age
at which, if he were anything else, this would be a test.

David is watching from the truck
for what a man would do:
the squaring, the not-quite-looking,
the joke that covers the measuring.

None of it comes.
The young one turns, and the old one slows,
and something passes between them
too low for David to hear —
there is a sound elephants make
under the floor of hearing,
and it is most of what they say —
and that is the whole acknowledgement.
Brief. Not a challenge. Not awkward.
Then the trunks go up and around each other,
the young one's tip resting a moment
in the old one's mouth, the way it is done,
and they stand like that in the open
as if there had never been a question,
because there hadn't.

David writes down: *not a challenge. not awkward.*
Then he sits a while
with what it would take.