Coyotes in the Ditch - Lisa Zimmerman

Sometimes in summer we wake
to their high-pitched chorus
carried across the rope of sleep.
Night sky abates and becomes
pasture, becomes singing--
horses stir and rustle,
the moon's white fangs pierce
chinks in the barn.

When you tell me you listened
to a pack in full daylight
take an animal down, bone by bone
in the snowy ditch--
we imagine a February calf
as the prize, imagine
the tender throat exposed.
All day you couldn't shake
that gleeful barking.

Tonight the farmer's cows across the road
low endlessly, their calves vanished
into the dark interior of trucks at dawn.
Beyond the string of fence the coyotes
begin their refrain.


Lisa ZIMMERMAN
First published in THE LIGHT AT THE EDGE OF EVERYTHING,
Anhinga Press