Sunday, September 27, 2015

Tiger, Who Once Was King




You pad with heavy paws through my dreams,
you beauty, who once owned the forest
where now the great trees fall.
Once hunter, you have become prey,
thin and hungry, hunted
for your parts, you tread fearfully
where you once were king.
My heart weeps for you,
and for us all, for this world
we are creating, which has no regard
for your majestic beauty. 

My poem was inspired by the following,
written by one of Kerry's students at
Ladysmith High School in South Africa.

Tiger ~ Mohammed Jamil

The striped feline
splashes through the water
freeing himself of all his impurities.

As his orange and black fur
glistens in the sun,
it catches the eye of the Hunter
and the unseen bullet
comes down and slays

the majestic beast.

© Mohammed Jamil


Kerry's prompt at Real Toads recently was
to peruse the students' poems and write a
poem inspired by one of theirs.
Their poems can be found at the blog
somewhere I have never travelled.


worldwildlife.org


I read their fine body of work, and it was
this tiger who spoke to me, in Mohammed's
very powerful poem.

The World Wildlife Federation states the world
has lost 97% of its tigers in just one century.
There are only 3200 in the world today,
who are endangered. A major threat is poaching
to fuel the trade in tiger parts.

Tigers have lost 93% of their habitat.
They are being displaced, like so many other wild
creatures worldwide, by human encroachment and
development, forest decimation and climate change.
(Rising sea levels threaten to wipe out entire forests.)

WWF has managed to protect some areas for tigers,
in hopes we will not wake up in another fifty years
to a world without tigers. But as development
continues apace, tigers are in peril. As are we all.


15 comments:

  1. We do not like to read of so magnificent a creatures death at the hands of hunters but it is a reality.
    Thank you for your warm response to the challenge, Sherry and all the comments you left on the blog.

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  2. The tiger is a majestic beast. Perhaps we love beautiful things too much - and destroy them in our envy.

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  3. I do hope slowly we are beginning to change our attitudes & are realizing what we are doing. I hope we make a turnaround in time! Sigh.

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  4. Marvelous! The two poems together show what we lose!

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  5. There have to be tigers. What kind of a world would it be without them?

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  6. These are such beautiful animals. Are we killing off all our beauty? So very sad. I like the student's poem and yours matches it perfectly in its sadness. I wish we could write poems of love for our all the creatures of this earth. Thank you for loving it so much Sherry.

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  7. I hate how humans are devouring life. The majesty of a tiger is diminished to a slight number of starving limbs. The very people who say they are pro-life seem to be silent at the rape of nature.

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  8. another sign of our most silly and selfish nature

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  9. Tigers.. no longer fearful symmetry.. there are reasons of being too many too greedy.. we are gnawing at our own limbs..

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  10. What a beautiful poem and response from you Sherry ~ I feel sad for this majestic beast, hunted like a prey ~

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  11. ... it's a delicate balance. They reintroduced wolves to Yellowstone and it is amazing how the whole environment has responded to it. You think we would learn! Great intro to this poem.

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  12. I loved both poems Sherry--what subject more fitting of poetry than the tiger, beautiful and deadly, made into a commodity--nothing shows the deplorable focus on money in our world more than the poaching and trophy 'hunting' which is decimating our wild things.

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  13. Both terrific-- Tigers are terrifying but deserve to have their lives! Thanks, sherry.

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  14. it is sad how we rob those majestic creatures off their land - they're surely dangerous but amazingly beautiful

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