I am alone. There is the taste of dust on my lips. The sun is going down over my face. In the evening’s quiet, I am standing by a pile of stones under the acacia tree’s canopy while suffocating within the mouth of the land’s heated breath. I am here in the sliding light. This is Africa.

In the distance the rustling Serengeti is making a sizzling sound; the same swishing sound that spent waves make when crashing over small pebbles on a beach, when they go tumbling back into the sea. I see across the ebb of the afternoon’s sunglow the bending stalks that sway and shimmer gold in the wind, while rolling away from me like the swells of my memories going from me across the stretch of Africa.

Late afternoon has come to the oasis. The wind whispers her name, near-silent, through the thorns in the tree branches above me. I feel her here now. She has come to me this evening from the sky on the incoming tide of the heated air. It isn’t the setting sun that blinds me.

But wait! My heart skips a beat. The trumpet sound of an elephant breaks the calm of the evening. Every time I hear that sound it is new to me like I’ve never heard it before. The bugle of the elephant is a sound that is primal and full. Not far away I see the moving shapes of those great leviathans, all in a line, all in a row, and all in a solemn procession moving through the giraffe high sea of sun-dried yellow ochre cane stocks. The herd is coming toward me. I am not afraid. Keeping their order, these African elephants, the largest of all elephants, are making their nightly pilgrimage to the muddy waterhole. I smell them. I know this family. The familiar pungent dankness of the muddy waterhole comes to me on the sunset’s last light. The fading sight of the blue-clay banks tells me night is coming fast.

The elephants are here. They are moving shadows traveling between the acacia trees, grabbing dust and hard brown ground. They, the enchanted ones, are large, gray creatures born of the plain’s hot breath. These owners of the savanna are swimming by me from out of the depths of the hot grasslands. They are entering the oasis with the incoming darkness. Swaying, rhythmic monuments with clay blue hues etched into the wrinkles that is their hides, they float by me where I stand near the pond under the big acacia tree and the familiar pile of rocks. In the twilight, like near-silent swimmers, they are flowing along in the life-stream that is Africa.

They make a soft, plodding sound as they glide by me. I stand solid-still. So grand they are, these elephants. Their visit to the watering hole is their nightly ritual. They see me. Together they are a family, a clan. In this vast continent of grass, of trees, of this trail, and of the living air that is the Serengeti they are one together. People say that elephants have great memories. I have heard that elephant families will visit the bones of their departed ones at the spot where their kin have died, like people do. I hear the squish of the soft mud under elephant feet that slip down to the pool’s edge to fill their nozzles with water.

As darkness falls I see a single star appear in the blue-ink of the heated quietus above. While using imaginary powers to wish the star down, hoping the shine is a celestial body that is magical; I pray it will snatch me up to her like a net. I am hoping that the first star that has just appeared directly above will carry me to her, to a time that she and I shared here under the big acacia tree. Those times, when she sang to the elephants while I played my flute for the watering herd are moments etched in those stars above me. I would have it again, that magic that was between us. She is up there walking in the sprinkling of stars that are being born again right now in this dimming light. I hold my breath. I close my eyes. I grit my teeth. I wish hard. Nothing happens. The elephants drink.

Perhaps the elephants, Gaia’s titan offspring, will grant me the miracle that we would be all together again. Lingering for a moment longer, I stay on the perimeter of the watering hole wishing my miracle come true. After all, this is Africa. Big things, and big magic happen here. Many other stars have now joined the first one in the expansive quiet above. The moon has risen high, and it is taking its place among the other celestial orbs. As Luna ascends, she plucks at the water’s disturbed, muddied surface. She etches a Van Goghesque swirl or two. I am still on the ground beneath the tree. My magic is small in this great place.

Now night covers the pool. The monoliths have drunk their fill. The matron, siren of the Serengeti, trumpets at the edge of the unseen pool in the great gathering darkness, signaling the others that it is time for them to go. They know what time it is. She summons them on to places where I cannot go. Again she bugles a night-piercing command into the consuming darkness to the going-away herd. She directs them to head for the trail between the acacia trees next to me. As they pass by me again, out of respect and politeness, none turn to look upon my streaked face. The pond is deserted of elephants. I am alone again under this old tree with a full moon rising from behind a snow topped mountain.

I wonder if the elephants will remember her, and the moments we spent together under the ancient acacia tree. Perhaps they have adopted her into their family. If so, will the elephants tell their young about the young, pretty girl who sang for them as she sat among the dazzling, metallic blue butterflies at the watering hole in the evening’s shadows? Will the matron stop at the base of the acacia tree, and will she sway her trunk over the rocks in remembrance of her?

I am alone. Somewhere in the bowl of the tall sea of grass the herd is now stabbing shadows with their pikes of ivory as they side-sway their way through the savanna; all unseen in the growing twilight distance between us. The night stars are now dancing in the hotness of rising drafts of air. I place a bouquet of her favorite savanna flowers at the head of the well-kept pile of stones under the old tree. Next to them, I place my flute. Jane would have liked that. It is time to go. Does she know I have not forgotten her songs?