NaPoWriMo #1: The Winter Tiger

In the windswept forest of ice and snow,
in the mountain blizzard and the winter's cold,
a spectre of stripes glides through the tundra.

Other creatures clear the way for her,
the terror of the northern reaches.
Her fur a tapestry of tawny and black,
a roaring fire amidst the white haze.

Her den cradled by the roots of an old pine,
the fallen cones scattered outside.
A hare crosses the threshold,
hears a rumbling growl within and flees.

The mother tigress shelters her newborns,
blind and mewling, against the arctic chill.
Soon the hunt will call to her again,
and she will haunt the ice once more.

(Yep, we're off on the NaPoWriMo adventure once more. Who knows where it'll go this year, but we'll soon find out with the next installment tomorrow. See you all there, and to my fellow poets, good luck!)

NaPoWriMo #20: Moonlight Chase

Howling on the wind,
the settlers shiver at the sound.
The great hunters of the woods
gather on this moonlit night.

The elder wolves know the ritual,
passed down through the ages
from one pack leader to the next,
scouring the frozen forest for prey.

The settlers seek comfort
in preemptive solutions
and set out with spear and flame
to drive their monsters out.

They come for the pack that night
but the wolves melt into the trees,
shades as old as the winter chill
and man's eternal, abstract foe.

Hell's Daffodils

A short time ago in a valley of snow
lived a man on a bike with nowhere to go.
He wanted to ride on the valley roads
but in his garden a flower started to grow.

A daffodil was sprouting despite the cold,
and it grew much faster than a blob of mould.
The man watched it bloom next to a garden gnome.
while the blizzard still threatened to bury his home.

A strange thing happened in the flowerbed;
two daffodils sprouted their bright yellow heads
next to the first above the settling snow,
but it was never foreseen how many would grow.

Ten times ten times ten the daffs all emerged,
before the man knew it the flowers converged
on his small house with strangling roots and stems,
at twelve feet tall, all of the daffs followed this trend.

The man was trapped in a nest of roots.
He remembered when he saw those fresh young shoots,
their brand new petals, their sumptuous glow.
Now he panicked as they burst in through the window.

And so it was that the man met his end
in the worst snowstorm he could comprehend.
When the blizzard cleared the house was still there,
entombed in the tendrils of the daffodils' snare.