Fatal Attraction

Those shining moonlit eyes Stare boldly from behind the tree I hear his breaths like sighs Or rolling waves from the far sea The striped face stares at me. The native hunters, those who dance Paint their skin black and green The one who holds me in this trance His stripes have been called those of fiends By no human could I be seen The villagers said to my face To stay away from there “The den, the lair, it is no place For you: MEN who return are rare” They don’t know the lure of night air And now I stand here with my poem In the silence I’m tighter wound Than when the bugs rustle in loam For I know he’d never make a sound By the tiger I’ve been found. **Alas! I wrote this for the quintain contest but I am too late!**