A tigress,
And her three little cubs,
Roamed the starving
Jungle of the night.
The mother’s attempts
Over the weeks,
Had been fruitless.
Would it be any different that moonlit night?
The gentle breeze carried,
A hoarse odor.
The unmistakable scent
Of the Indian Gaur.
She stopped,
Dead still on the dry dirt.
Her cubs tumbled to a halt behind her.
Somewhere up ahead, was a deadly chance at dinner.
The Tigress looked up,
At the full white moon.
It was an eye contact,
Between two primal warriors.
With a nudge of the head and
A flick of the tail, she
Strode ahead, leaving the cubs
Behind the curtain of the moon.
The Gaur, the mighty Gaur.
The one-ton Goliath.
Powerful during the day,
But hopelessly romantic come a silvery night.
The moonlight made,
the black Gaur, a silver-back.
The crouching tigress, however,
Looked just like the silver forest.
Step by silent step,
The slithering heroine,
Came closer to dinner.
An extra month of redeemable life for the family.
Nobody, not even the fornicating monkeys,
Saw it coming.
The night, wasn’t like any other.
It was the night of the Queen.
When she pounced,
On the blissfully unaware behemoth,
It was as if the dry forest had come alive,
With bright burning flashes of red.
The shockwaves rippled,
blanketing the leafy carpet floor,
Waking even the tiniest insects,
To the loudest shrilly bellows.
Murder had been done,
In the dead of night,
And there wasn’t a single force
To oppose Her Majesty’s
She let out a low grumble,
An earth-hugging call
To her hungry cubs.
And zing they came, tumbling.
The Queen looked up,
At the full red moon,
The Goddesses were satisfied,
The cosmic debt had been quenched.
The night could rest easy now,
Tiger Red was in effect.
Until the morning brought with it,
Another day, and another night.
