A new poem

URBAN SNOW (March, 2011) We hike in snow Complaining of ice Through a park whose usual gate Is closed Across an empty golf course A still in and black and white, Evergreens black brush strokes Black against the white of snow Then At the edge of the greenbelt Darkness forms four legs, Then another Holding still; Coyotes! Hands screaming with cold We fumble with cameras, Knowing they’d flee Yet the young female ventures close enough To see the banked fire In her amber eyes, The detailed grain of her coat In shades of lichen and fallen Leaves. We gaze at each other In silence, Our breath a fragile bridge across the divide Between us Though she is watchful she is Almost indifferent to our bundled shapes, our dangling cameras, Our boots worn from other trails It is our turn to be old, To rest in this moment As if it were a dream we couldn’t quite remember Though I can almost feel the cold thrust of her nose in my hand The musky thicket at dusk The bones of feral cats Ringing like bells in her blood The wild thickets of hunger and Lusts are not strange to me, Nor the call for a mate That never answered. Karen Sykes