afieldnotebook

A Passing

Coyotes passed through the field at the back
of the house last night–coyotes, from midnight
till dawn, hunting, foraging, a mad scavenging,
scaring up pocket gophers, white-breasted mice,
jacktails, skinks, the least shrew, taking
a bite at a time.

They were a band, screeching, yodeling,
a multi-toned pack. Such yipping and yapping
and jaw clapping, yelping and painful howling,
they had to be skinny, worn, used-up,
a tribe of bedraggled uncles and cousins
on the skids, torn, patched, frenzied
mothers, daughters, furtive pups
and, slinking on the edges, an outcast
coydog or two.

From the way they sounded they must have smelled
like rotted toadstool mash and cow blood
curdled together.

All through the night they ranged and howled,
haranguing, scattering through the bindweed and wild
madder, drawing together again, following
old trails over hillocks, leaving their scat
at the junctions, lifting their legs on split
rocks and switch grass. Through rough-stemmed
and panicled flowers, they nipped
and nosed, their ragged tails dragging
in the camphor weed and nettle dust.

They passed through, all of them, like threads
across a frame, piercing and pulling, twining
and woofing, the warp and the weft. Off-key,
suffering, a racket of adominables
with few prospects, they made it–entering
on one side, departing on the other.
They passed clear through and they vanished
with the morning, alive.

-Pattiann Rogers, 1990