She’s all in orange
prowling woodland,
senses prey and hackles rise.
It’s a coyote, lean with ruffed tan fur,
in the midst of its own stalking
for its usual diet of voles and lemmings.
The shot in her head is the steadiest,
the neatest, the most accurate.
One to the chest, one to the head.
The canine’s teeth spit blood and foam.
The snow is stained in all directions.
The certainty of her thoughts 
makes up for the curse of all past failures.
Until she raises her rifle, that is.
And darkness starts to fall.
And her trigger finger veers from one
side to the other, even glides off altogether.
Her nerves waver.
Her patience gulps.
Then bang!  The barrel jerks up.
A snowflake lands in her eye.
The coyote dashes off into the thicket,
outpaces her reckless second shot.
She stands there, helpless.
A loner at least.
There’s no crowd to laugh
at her poor marksmanship.
But she’s a crowd.
She’s the one for whom no skill is enough,
no witness is worthwhile.
Sun sets, she trudges back to her cabin.
But she’ll be out again tomorrow,
Redemption demands it.
A coyote lives to hunt another day,
to be shot at when a stranger’s mood needs mending.

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John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, River And South and The Alembic. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Paterson Literary Review, White Wall Review and Cantos.