Ivory!
Ivory!
Ivory is now a commodity!
To be bought and sold!
For an increasing price the bloodied tusks
Get exchanged another hand to hold!
There are many involved
In an Ivory carving industry!
With many people looking
For some Ivory jewelry!
To adorn bodies
Creating in some friends
Jealousy!
Traded in many places like
Laos, Hong Kong, Vietnam,
Angola, South Africa, Egypt,
Thailand and the DRC!
Uganda, Malaysia, Quatar,
Malawi and the UAE!
All interested in value adding
To the tusks profitability!
China bound the majority!
Many, many dead elephants
Left rotting for few to see!
Some tusks headed to Europe
And the USA to satisfy
Their markets domestically!
With all this demand
Poaching is now
Out of hand!
Whole herds exterminated!
Left traumatized
Shot by AK47s
Or by spear thrown by hand!
If this does not stop
Across many a nation,
The Elephants will ultimately
In a short space of Universal time
In the wild face extermination!
Even slaughtering babies
Enough to make you sick!
Their tusks in comparison
Being like an ivory toothpick!
Lifeless bodies
Left to rot
Under the blistering sun!
Feeding scavengers
Eating on the run!
The Gabon, Congo and Cameroon
Will have no forest Elephants left soon!
Nigeria being a transit hub
To ease the tusks on their way!
As Tanzania now counts the cost
Of many an Elephant poaching foray!
No thought from anyone
Along the line!
From poacher, trafficker, trader, crafter
To businessman or concubine!
What of the African ecology?
Where the Elephants change landscapes
By felling many a tree!
After the poachers leave
Only stinking flesh
With vultures, hyenas and flies
To see!
We are destroying
Both knowingly and unknowingly
A life form with feelings and balance
The Earth and all its lifeforms
Are supposed to be
Under our,
Homo sapiens
Custody!
Copyright
David Nicoll
29.11.2016