Coyotes
       

They must have taken the moon with them,
four or more scanning the fields,
a commotion of howls and shattered barks

waking our dogs to a fury,
an instinct marked for the chase.

They come down from these hills when the land dries out,

lean, disciplined, ravaged, in search of water,
and whatever else is left to the wind.

The owls swoop down from the eucalyptus
at a measured distance.

Hunger: stark and brutal as these fields.

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Copyright © 2015 Jacqueline Marcus All rights reserved
from Summer Rains
Iris Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission