Howdah

I delight in learning new words, and I remember the first time I heard this one. It was in a poem that Jane Hirshfield read when I saw her at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in Carmel Valley, CA. I was mesmerized by this word and looked it up as soon as I returned home.

From Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition:
how-dah n. [Hindi & Urdu hauda fr. Ar hawdaj) (1774): a seat or covered pavillion on the back of an elephant or camel.

What the Heart Wants
by Jane Hirshfield

See then what the heart wants,
that pliable iron
sprung to the poppy's redness,
the honey's gold, winged
as the heron-lit water is:
by reflecting.
As an aged elephant answers
the slightest, first gesture of hand,
it puts itself at the mercy--
utterly docile, the forces
that brought it there vanished,
fold into fold.
And the old-ice ivory, the unstartlable
black of the eye
that has travelled so far
with the fringed, peripheral howdah
swaying behind, look mildly back
as it swings the whole bulk of the body
close to the ground. Over and over
it does this, bends to what asks.
Whatever asks, heart kneels and offers to bear.