What can a rock but do

I have burnt a few bridges,
And lost a quarter of my song,
The beginnings I can still see,
But I can see not what went wrong.
I always had a song to sing,
Today I fumble a bit too much,
Though memories still haunt me,
I have lied a tad too much.

There be a strength in pain,
But to suffer is silence is my wont,
For what can a rock do, but stand,
And remember all the bridges burnt.
One of them was my ticket to heaven,
All I have left is but doors to devils hall.

The white elephant

My literal friend and me went to the zoo. I was excited to take him around as he was unfamiliar with wild animals. He had lived all his life in a concrete jungle.

Now my friend is a very intelligent person. He ideates and innovates. And most of what I have seen him convinces me that he is a genius. Walking along in the zoo, his insights on the animals were new to me. His approach was totally different to the hackneyed ways I looked at things. My familiarity had coloured my eyes. With his insights, I was enjoying the trip. While I was bored in my previous trips, this trip had me questioning of all that I was missing, looking at the familiar.

At the safari, looking at the elephant, my friend exclaims with joy, 'Elephants are white!'. I smile condescendingly. I tell him, 'That's an albino.'. But he wouldn't listen. For him elephants were white, for that was what he saw. I tried to explain but sometimes my friend gets lost in his own mind. We moved on to tales of how animal greetings tend to be more southern than us.

Fast forward to a few months. My genius friend used a white elephant as a logo for his new company. He tells me that the albino represents how in a sea of black elephants, his company is different. I am happy that this was just the logo.

What worries me the most is the difference with which animals greet each other. When did in the evolutionary biology did we move towards the north? Not that I am complaining.