The Elephant’s Trunk

40,000 muscles in a powerful limb
that can branches rip,
pick a single pin,
with its mobile tip,
yet can dig for moisture,
without skin’s rupture.

It’s a long sucking nose
working like a hose,
and a snorkel for swimming
quite far underwater,
(– the lungs can bear
the lower-pressure air
– they’re protected and bounded
– not by cavity surrounded,
but by tissue that is squeezable).

Compliant, and controllable,
and eminently flexible,
an appendage that can smell
and hear aswell:
aloft it’s lifted to taste the breeze,
and stroked on the ground to feel a sound.

A trunk that can trumpet
multiple abilities,
design of such wonderful,
boggling complexities.