“Broken Tail”

Rathambhore in India a Tiger sanctuary
An emptiness of humans
Nirvana it could be
An old fort standing motionless
A fabulous retreat
We are watching tigers vanish
We are watching the elite
Live and die in India
The solace of it all
And this is a great story
Of a cat that came to call

Two cubs were born
One confident the other clearly shy
Broken tail and slant ear
Broken tail a guy
So arrogant and confident
And playful so alive
So handsome and so with it
Clearly he would survive

In essence he was a special cat
His potentitality
He was quite an extravert
And his objectivity
Transcending other animals
He was stoic he was strong
With inherited characteristics
Where nothing could go wrong

He grew into a bold soul
As powerful as could be
Then one day he just wandered off
For he was really free
He left the family group
And he was gone before the night
He was off to find his fortune
In the cool moonlight

He knew his authenticity
In his heart he had a wish
He needed a special lady
Someone to relish
He rolled along such arrogance
Was his all of the time
he never looked back at Rathanbhore
He began in fact to climb
Up into the weary hills
The monotony of miles
For him it was a privilege
It twisted all his dials

At the apex of evolution
A superiority
A quality par excellence
Real supremacy
He bonded excellently
A tenaciousness for living
A monlithic soul
A fullness to capacity
Within his noble role

To have the peace of Rathambhore
And set out on the trail
Was a monumental headache
One that could easily fail
To Ramgarh to the sanctuary
And onwards to Darra
Where he met up with
A express train
And was killed he had walked far

Through areas of poaching
And people and we know
Whereever there are people
Then tigers dare not go
Cattle and farm animals
Clusters driven they
Are killing zones for Tigers
Who are so made to pay

But broken tail was clearly
Up to all that stuff
Camping in the night time in caves
However rough
Along rocky escarpments
Looking for a mate
He wanted to pass his genes on
To open his own gate

Into the next world rapidly
But it was not to be
He never found his tigress
And died probably
Love sick and so lonely
But looking every day
Fighting off the hunger and the thirst
Along the way

Over longish gorges
Across the waters he
Entered into empty places
The opportunity
Never ever manifested
Broken tail was sure
That one day he would find his love
Or be lonely evermore

He had grown up with the sound of trains
That ran around Rathambhore
But had never known how frightening
They were so ever sure
Of himself nothing phased him
Till that train came by at speed
And he was knocked down there and killed
Broken yes indeed

But he was his true weight
Not emaciated he
Had walked through really new terrain
And had hunted honestly
Darra was his resting place
They carried him to town
Showed him the respect that he had earned
Before they put him down

We retraced our steps
On horseback and followed his path away
Through rathambhore and Ramgarh
And to Darra he made sway
Despite so many humans
And poaching company
He took his chance he had his dance
And remained forever free

What he did was exceptional
Beyond the range of souls
He took on all and sundry
Paraded with their controls
He was on the edge of significance
And ledges in the caves
Leaping climbing swimming
One of the Nature’s knaves

A toughness and tenacity
That took him down the trail
Up into these rugged hills
Where smoke and eagles sail
Where the mercy of each moment
Meets the flurry of each day
And where moral sensibility
Can pass the time away