Walking through the field, I came upon two coyotes.

          Their heads inside a snow mound, feasting.

The mink was killed affectionately, as if eating the afterbirth

          from their pups. I felt coddled by their maternal

nod toward my figure, wintered like a canoness on the plain.

          I watched them carry the mink by his neck,

auburned from the teeth, to their secret place, their amber

          room. I envisioned them coiled in the heat

of their conclave with the immaculate garnet flesh they found.

          How long will their thirst be staved before

starving? All that remained was a stain of blood, a cursive

          stream of scarlet on the white sheet of the

field, and the thread — feverish and throbbing from me to

          them, shredding at the stitch. Before I came

to Colorado, I sensed the coyotes with their cinereous coats

          as if they summoned me, as if I conjured

them. To my sorrow, they were macerated as the mountains

          stripped by settlers curing meat. Among their

kin, who turns, burning on the spit? Dreaming, they dream

          of them, going up with the bush. They reminded

me of sisters, banished from the world they knew. In

          another life, were they accused of sorcery, hair of

flame let down in the field. They were the light that

          grew in the gale. The pastor with his sola scriptura,

swelling with superstition under his robes. He is the

          hunter that cannot be redeemed. Every year, the

coyotes wait for the sisters to return to the field. They

          watch them set fire to the wheat¹. Match against the

book, autumn ablaze with anguish and gone by dusk.

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^{The final three lines allude to part 3 of Louise Glück’s “Landscape”}