This piece is written in memory of a beautiful pregnant elephant who just this week was fed a pineapple that been hollowed out and rigged with firecrackers. The great beast so excited by her good fortune and blessing of the ripe sweet fruit grabbed for it. As she put it in her mouth and began to swallow. The firecrackers exploded and the blistering from the burns slowly suffocated her to death over three days as she stood in a river hoping to feed her dying little one.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/04/asia/india-elephant-death-intl-hnk-scli/index.html&ved=2ahUKEwi8ptnP5-vpAhVolnIEHc-ZDzkQFjAMegQIAxAB&usg=AOvVaw2P7Jp5HwhbhA3ytXmBev5c
Dear elephant mother,
You walked through a village in India your belly swollen with your
elephant calf alive, kicking. And then you came upon it,
a great gift from above.
There yellow and glissing in the sun.
Surely Ganesh have smiled down on you. And your elephant calf stirred in you belly.
Your great ears waved excited.
You reached out and grabbed it with your trunk. Was there something inside?
Too sweet the scent to tell.
And once in your mouth it exploded
exploded
exploded.
Your tongue spit apart your throat burned to crushed ash.
Teeth blow out your head.
Cracked.
And somehow with the swallow of the sweet yellow pineapple that glowed in the sun your insides burst.
And you stood three days in a river dazed in agony as day was night and night was day.
Your baby kicked and your stomach burned and your throat swelled and the pain oh the pain!
Your larynx blown and you could not make a sound.
And your calf stirred and thrust and hungered and you could not eat or drink you went to the river.
drink you could not.
On the third day your heart with the sun it faded and your calf kicked, "momma why don't you feed me?"
"Because", you answered "I cannot feed myself I cannot eat, I cannot drink and my throat is closing we cannot breath. Don't worry my love Ganesh will dance for us!"
And then you fell into the river and your heart stopped and your baby elephant kicked and thrust till the river water washed his life away and your baby followed you to the other side.
On the third day you rose.
We pray
Dear great beast our heart pains as it should
Our soul shakes as it should
And tears fall as they will
You were murdered and tortured ,
With baby in belly,
Oh mother how you tried
How you cried
How you felt your baby stir
The gift of your death was made first in the garden.
It was good and sweet and yellow and juicy and from God
The pineapple.
But man took that and make it agony and pain and death to you and your stirring elephant wee one, born in heaven not on the earth in the river where you lay trying to drink a drop to live
May the men who planned your gruesome fate absorb the Karma of your murder and feel the pain that will follow them to the end of days.
Amen
