NaPoWriMo #27: Acacia Siesta

The savannah simmers in the heat of midday.
A single impala wanders the plains
keeping one eye fixed on a nearby tree,
the danger underneath it not hard to see.

Six lions rest in the acacia's shade,
the pride male watching the grassland haze.
All of this he fought for and won by force,
a cycle of violence runs it usual course.

The cats sleep easy with their hunger sated.
A night comes the hunt for which they've waited.
The buffalo huddle close, but they're unprepared,
the lions attack what no one else dares.

NaPoWriMo #15: Hunters Return

It's finally happened. I've reached the half-way point of NaPoWriMo, and to celebrate this milestone, I present a poem which was inspired by a story I've been following recently.

Hunters Return

A young chimpanzee
sits beneath a tree
in the Ugandan jungle,
his brother lounging
in the branches above.

They had considered
shadowing the hunting gang
when they left,
but given their mob mentality
the brothers decided better.

Suddenly a clamour strikes up,
the jungle canopy explodes
into a frenzy of shrieks.
The youngsters recognise
the work of their older kin.

The hunters return
with dismembered red colobus
to satiate their bloodlust.
Maybe a morsel or two
will be left for the brothers
if they ask nicely.

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.