The Tyneside Cinema is very grand now.

Three brass elephants

To me they were all the same elephant separated
only by age. Not for me then the collapsible
string theory of time but a basic acceptance
that things do not remain.

Each elephant's legs were scored with dirt in wrinkles
that got deeper with size. The heavy existence of each
in the Serengeti of the footstool eliminated the need
for the other two: except every need they had
was formed from generations waiting on the carpet.

A tragedy of theft, the three brass elephants
will not now be left to the children.
I entertain others' stories of them, but quietly reject
the porridge-bowl neatness of a family of diminishing size.