In the heart of the Serengeti
on this vast, unrelenting plain,
only night can relieve the fever
in a season that has no rain.
But the moon brings a different danger,
more unmerciful than the heat,
for by night stalk the furtive jackals
from whose ambush there's no retreat.
In the moments before the furor,
when the plains seem to promise peace,
there's no sign of impending carnage,
there's no hint of a vicious feast.
Yet the time of annihilation
comes as swift as a hawk in flight,
and the screams of the grazing zebra
tell the tale of its frenzied fright.
On the plains of the Serengeti
no relief can be found from fear,
for each day ghastly death comes circling,
and the jackals are always near.
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Author Notes
This poem is written in a steady, constant meter, but it is not iambic. The syllable count is 9/8/9/8 and in each line the accent is on syllables 3,6, and 8. For those who care about such things, a foot of poetry that consists of two unaccented syllables followed by an accented syllable is called an anapest instead of the more usual iamb. In each line of this poem, the first two feet are anapestic and the last foot is iambic. If read aloud, this construction has great flow; just don't try to make it go daDUMdaDUM.
Different is a two syllable word - diff/rent
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