oneword #14 kraal

This is a piece that I wrote last November. I'd love to know what you think of it, so I thought I'd send it for a ride on the Monday Poetry Train.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For this oneword, I let my trusty purple dictionary fall open to a page, and blindly placed my finger upon an entry.

kraal

Seven elephant calves
came together in Mboro’s kraal.
Rivers ran from eyes
through day’s dust
on rough gray skin.

Men who smelt of salt and shit
pulled and pushed them miles
with talk of a traveling circus
running along the beaches of the Indian Ocean
away from their vanishing parade of female Elders.

Who would teach them to be elephants?

The young ones’ trunks
snaked each other’s hides
ears flapping to the wind-garbled
trumpet of the Matriarch
as she gathered a battalion of Cows to rescue
the children of their murdered cousins.

The Ladies encircled the grass hut
in which every man was sleeping off
a wild night’s whiskey—dead to the world

The Madams moved in.
They stomped the men
until their carcasses combined
with soil, and thatching grass,
becoming one flattened mass.

The oldest Cows freed the seven young elephants
pulling boards from the walls of the kraal.

Stopping miles from men,
the Crons' trunks caress
every inch of the seven rescued ones
liberated this night the wind
carried stories through the sky.