Tiger stripes
Poattic-22
Tiger stripes, chinese-script like! Black ink on paper-like orange hide.
Tiger stripes- shadows of slow burning embers
That flare into a burning fire on the coldest night.
Tiger stripes- disappear into a ominous black streak
As the predator pounces on its prey.
Tiger stripes- are they marks
Left by a heated branding iron pressed against tender skin
Stamped into the tiger’s furry hide?
Tongues of fiery heat play beneath the stripes.
Tiger stripes- they suddenly come alive, like live calligraphy
Crawling, creeping, and then surging like a wave.
How precise is that bent of angle-
A wave thrusting its force to capsize a harmless boat-
Tiger stripes- dilate, enlarge, expand. They hypnotise…
And then the heart pounds rapidly, an instinctive primal fear in its quarry’s eyes.
Perhaps the divine in an artistic frenzy painted
Each stripe, subtly, like the Sumi artist.
Tiger stripes, Zen thick black brushstrokes,
Alacrity sharpens the mind in meditation.
Still the mind is! Yet agile,
Nothing can disrupt this stillness!
The mind’s eye -doughty and fearless
As if it were peering into the mirror that reflects
A wild eyed tiger in action, leaping, chasing, and pinioning
Unaware of its furrowed black stripes.
©Mumtaz Khorakiwala
Image courtesy: Keyur Nandaniya
