Witness to a Fall Morning

I crouched among the leafless cottonwoods
and looked across the road, past the barbed wire
and up the shadowed rise from Panther Creek
to the field there. The coyote stayed low
and to her course, rowing through the wet stubble
on a journey made plain by manner, by
doubt, a mother at once fierce and afraid,
her nose seeking only bitter distance
from the morning, her pups crying for suck
as if that’s what had kept them alive and
not the running.

And just as well they did not know the threat
but kept forward so as not to lose sight
or scent, slowing only to lick or mew,
to tumble as pups will, as unmindful
of the current as they are unmindful
of breath, the hitch and shudder as they leap
again, chase the worry they might be left
to hunt on their own, driven not by chance
or peril, but laughter and dreams that rise
from a full gut, from the burp of milk that
glazes their snouts.

There is no hurry in the coyote.
She’s steady, even as her pups turn flight
to joy, hunger to play. There is nothing
to their day but motion, the trailing scent
of their mother as she leads them away
from the world they know to one uncertain.
If they startle at a flower, the wind,
a leaf under foot or twirling past, or
the sun as plain as the sky yet worthy
of a fright, she slows to the moment and
gifts them their time.

There is no hurry in the boy, either,
a pup himself the way he turns to sound,
kicks dew from the grass and sucks the egg yolk
from his teeth. Had he awoke this morning,
blown the cold from his boots, and imagined
killing something was the best he could do?
The answer perches on his hip, blue gone
gray on the old rifle. What brings a boy
to killing? What need is there at sixteen
that grandpa’s whiskey and a girl can’t salve?
That calls for this.

I did not want to imagine him cruel.
All I really knew of him was the ping
of gravel when he spun past my mailbox
late for school, the clatter of his rusted
jeep. He’s only a boy, I told myself,
shooting mistletoe from the oaks, looking
past October to Christmas and a kiss.
He will not harm the coyote and her young.
Or he has lost a lamb, he is Bo Peep
protecting his flock, a duty he keeps
without choosing.

He turns, the animal in him knowing
as much as hearing. The hunt colors his eyes.
Something graceful in the way he raises
the rifle to his shoulder, light as a spear.
He is a boy, without thought in the way
of men, without thought for what a bullet
might do other than spark a thrill. I watch,
he waits, certain of the speed in his hand,
no need to rush when the time between breath
and blood is nothing more than the pressure
of his finger.

Should I speak out, shout a warning? To whom?
The boy? The coyote? She always knew.
By the time the pups catch her she is down,
heat leaking from her throat. Such a small wound
to end her. The pups nuzzle her swollen
teats, lick their last. Now she cries, and now she
snaps at them, catches skin enough to draw
blood. They run from surprise, from betrayal,
the pain dulling before they reach the creek.
By the time they remember their hunger
her scent is gone.