The Elephant from the Sea

Took a stroll along the Undercliff Walk with Andy on Easter Day. Busy with families and dogs. The sun over the sea. We ended up walking to Rottingdean, spent some time wondering about the beautifully serene and atmospheric churchyard there. Deciphering descriptions on gravestones (my favourite was 'and to an unknown sailor lost on the above ship' and another; 'artist, musician and troublemaker'). Something nostalgic here. Made me remember - for some unfathomable reason - something from childhood. I wanted to build a model of a country landscape, of lanes, and trees, and hills. A 3-dimensional map of a fictional country. When was this? the late 70s? Maybe. I think it was something in the trees and the brightness of the sky that made me think of Scotland. Strange. It has been twenty five years -a quarter of a century!- since I left Scotland. and I still miss it.
Walking up toward Rottingdean, I noticed something on the wall that ptoected the Undercliff Path from the high tide, the sea all wild and Ides-of-March-ish. I thought, at first that it was a paper bag, some piece of discarded rubbish. Other people looked at it too, and passed by. Odd. We drew level with it, at this thing, this object on the wall.
It was an elephant. A small wooden elephant.
Well, not that small, the size, perhaps of a... How do you measure the size of miniature elephant figurines? The size of two clenched fists perhaps? I doubt it would fir into an empty food tin... Surprisingly heavy too. Felt pleasing when I picked it up.
I looked around for any owner. No likely candidates. Should I leave it? Perhaps the owner might return? Hmm. Perhaps it might be washed into the sea. Perhaps it wanted to be found. Maybe it -somehow- got washed up from the sea. A piece of driftwood lost from a ghost ship.
Not the first time I found a random elephant. Back in 1994, stoned on some wasteground next to East Berkshire College, I was scrabbling in the mud. I loosened something. A stone I thought. Working it free.
A small elephant. A beautifully crafted thing. The size of a chess piece.
My parents still have it on their mantelpiece.
And I have an elephant from the sea sitting perched upon a pile of books.
I wonder where it came from, this elephantasm, but I know I shall have it forever.
Things that are found are so much more precious than those that have never been lost.