Herd Movement

The Chinese elephants made the news this week,
and like most headlines, there’s more to the story.

They’d wandered north of their protected preserve.
A few frightened farmers tossed firecrackers.

At first, I think of these farmers as Frost’s stone savages,
armed in their own Chinese platitudes of what makes neighbors.

But spring is the mischief in me, so I google why elephants
are moving across China. What I find goes deeper ago.

Once the whole of China knew Asian elephants. Royals
sat higher than subjects, warriors rode them to battle.

Then came the ivory trade. Now, there are 200-some
wild Asian elephants enshrined in a southwestern province.

But elephants remember where their food is sweet
and ripest.  They don’t regard the boundaries of protection.

They don’t know that groups of Dai people are trapped
within the same borders, too poor to migrate, born to farm.

The farmers plant their corn. The elephants come at night
to eat, leave behind wet footprints, cool off in the waddles.

The sentence for shooting an elephant is death.  But maybe
desperate men can fuse a little flashback, defend with sparks?

They tell a student from the U.S. that the elephants plunder
every night.  They show her last night’s muddy evidence.

For now, the government is pleased with the herd’s return
to Jinghong. For now, citizens point all visitors toward the park.

See Wild Elephant Valley where you can have your photo snapped
astride a wild Asian elephant who kicks a soccer ball for her dinner.