[ IP ] Wilderness

Snow was nestled in the boughs and bases of the pines 
 The wintry air was cold and deathly still. 
 Trudging through the powdered white of valleys and inclines, 
 A solitary hunter stalked to kill. 
 
 It seemed so few still lived there in the wasteland of the cold, 
 Were hibernating or had left for south. 
 But as his kind before him had in all the days of old, 
 Man had come to hunt for hungry mouths. 
 
 The snapping of a twig beneath his tattered leather boots, 
 Sent to the sky a flock of frightened quails. 
 Scared from the warmth they'd sought amongst the hollows of the roots, 
 The air was filled with all their desperate wails. 
 
 He raised the rifle from his grip and brought it to his eyes, 
 As sunrays burst to herald in the dawn. 
 Foiled by the harsh glare of the coming day's sunrise, 
 His chance to bag a kill had come and gone. 
 
 As pink and purple threaded through the clouds and on the peaks, 
 The foiled hunter headed back for home. 
 For he knew well the struggle of the life a hunter ekes, 
 In wilderness where luck is rare to roam.
