Chinook In Winter

Early Morning Feeding

by Coyote

Rude awoken into the cold still dark,

Winter Solstice morn,

From where I was gripped firm my wife’s warm cheeks,

To be set here on the new fallen snow,

Still in mournful shock,

My breath clouds becoming beard icicles,

My cheeks puckered like taught crumpled parchment.

I am one with leafless limbed ash grey trees,

Chiselled from hoarfrost,

Reached out to me as though they are in pain,

Like frozen synapses in mid writhing,

Lost their connection.

To the life giving force of the Spring sun,

To which they still reach, long and aspire.

And there amidst the rising morning fog,

As it were their sea,

Exhausting impatient puffs of white smoke,

Chinook insists with his hoof in the snow,

That I heed right now,

His priority in all things on earth,

As might tend to distract my attention.

Which makes me cranky.

“Ya buggers you and that Thoroughbred skanky ,

If knew could be over that fence and blown.

To starve down to bone,

 Upon the dry grass ‘neath that foot of snow,

Or the bark and rot of the fallen low.”

Ah, smarter than that.

“We’d rather delight in the irony,

Of your pathetic hubris slavery.”

 They say in one voice.

Upon which we glare each at the other,

 Shared hostile affection brother to brother.

They are my Horses.

“Neigh!” they quick counter.

“You are but our slave poor human flounder,

For so long as you learn and ‘wise behave.

Feed us then go knave!”

Even Barn Cat upon the hitching rail,

As well waits my service and flicks her tail,

Showing her askance,

And shuns my hand with not so much a glance.

 She will not pacify me either one small fave.

“The barn now!” she mews. “You’re also my slave.”

Dec. 24, 2010

            

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