1.
Spring
in the subtlest colours of winter:
faint pink of maple,
golden tinge of birch,
yet spruce almost black
against the whitest greys.
We wake to a field mouse,
soft brown fur and clean white belly.
I could skin the whole family,
stitch pretty mittens.
2.
The coyotes are coming down from the mountains
where the hunting has grown thin.
They set the valley dogs to barking, hard monotones
like stones the size for throwing.
Last year they got the cats, fattened
on a daily breakfast of birds. Their ambush
devised, practised, refined.
The clever executions:
hard shakes, snapped …