NaPoWriMo #30: Tiger Fire

And so, it has come to this; the final day of NaPoWriMo. How better to see off this year's event than with a recurring theme which lent this blog its name?

Tiger Fire

On the edge of a lake in Northern India,
where crocodiles gather and bask in the sun,
the way chital and sambar are restless
as the sun is directly overhead
and the grass is as dry as sand.

A fire crackles into life
and rages across the meadows,
flushing unsuspecting creatures
from their hiding places
and into the blaze's lethal path.

A tiger, resting under a sal tree,
feels the heat of the fire's hunger
and flees towards the lake,
flanked by the langur monkeys
and wild boar following in his wake.

At the water's edge, the tiger halts.
The flames cut off paths of escape.
The forest across the water remains unburned.
The tiger spies the chital running,
running to the lake to save their hides.

At last, the fire claims the shore,
but the tiger fears it no more,
for he alone amongst cats
masters the waters of the lake,
and tears past the crocodiles
to reach the opposite shore.

NaPoWriMo #27: Cormorant Gang

It's another animal poem for day twenty seven of NaPoWriMo, and this time we meet a bird which is famous for being semi-aquatic and is found all over the world, including the banks of the River Ganges.

Cormorant Gang

We take to the water in gangs
up and down the Ganges,
swimming in great processions
as we search for shoals.

The fishermen call us water crows,
apt indeed, for with our hooked beaks
and oily black feathers, we are
their underwater cousins.

We find some unfortunate fish,
and flanked by a clan of otters
we surround them and dart
through the mirk of the river.

The fishermen take their share.
We squabble with the otters for ours,
but our gang leaves with silvery prizes
squirming in our beaks.

Snow Leopard

A stream in the highest valley,
a glacier of the Himalayas,
frozen yet still running
thanks to a conscientious spring.

Prints in the snow betray
the path of a snow leopard
prowling along the valley
towards an intended victim.

A markhor buck drinks at the stream,
a lord of mountain goats,
coiled corkscrew snake horns
and a man fit for a horse.

A pale ghost, the spotted shade,
slinks along the rocks,
and surprises the thirsty goat,
chasing it headlong up a ridge
till claws and teeth seize it
just as it leaps from a ledge.

Champawat

after Jim Corbett, Man-eaters of Kumaon

In the jungles of Kumaon
a darkness descended
in the form of a tigress.

She came from the windswept
forests of Nepal, having taken
two hundred lives.
Soldiers hunted for her,
and she fled to find a new kingdom.

She prowled the fields
around Champawat,
stalking those who strayed
too far from their homes.
She pounced on them
while they gathered dried leaves,
to drag them off into a ravine,
leaving trails of crimson in her wake.

Her roars rumbled
along the road at night,
and her prey shivered in their huts.
The tigress grew bloated
on human flesh,
but another two hundred lives
could not satisfy her.

A pool of fresh blood,
a shattered blue necklace.
The tigress drags her newest kill,
a girl of sixteen,
into the forested ravine.
A severed, abandoned leg
turns the water red.
A rustling in the scrub.
She growls, snarls, retreats into the brush.
She can smell a man's scent.

She follows a stream to the ridge,
but her hunter is persistent.
That night she feasts,
but come the morning drums echo
from the trop of the ridge.
She awakens to see
her pursuers in the marsh.

Two rounds from a shotgun,
and one round from a rifle
send her tearing up the hill.
The drums beat louder,
voices chanting in a frenzy.
She rounds on her enemies
and charges her undaunted pursuer.

A blast, and the tigress stops.
A second blast and she flinches,
ears flattened and bared teeth.
She flees for a rock,
but her hunter is not deterred.
He is the last thing she sees
before the final blast.

The drums turn silent,
the chanting reaches fever-pitch,
and the tigress lies still,
staring up at the hunter
with lightless amber eyes.