Her name is Chang Champoo,
translated as ‘Elephant Pink.’
Met on the street in tourist Thailand.
9 years old.
6 months pregnant.
A beggar in an urban landscape.

Hungry,
grabbing sugar cane from my fingers.
Desperate for food.
Destined for an early grave.

“Where are you from?”
A question to her mahout,
in Thai hauled from fragments of memory.
“The border.”  
Seemingly obtuse but not really.
Only one nearby.
Burma.

Elephants,
born in captivity,
used in logging,
now unemployed.
Teak forests of old but a distant memory.

Did I only fuel her belly
buying over-priced sugar cane?
Or did I also fuel
rampant exploitation
of disadvantaged animals?

Not everything in life
Is black and white.
Sometimes it is grey,
This night it was Pink.
How could I refuse her sustenance
when confronted by those
mournful pachyderm eyes.

The question lingers…