Die to Live

Like a drunken man

Limp and unsteady,

The wounded deer crawled

Over a ready-made, rocky bed

And sprawled

Headlong into silence.

Unrelenting and skilled

As a supermarket butcher,

The red-nosed coyote

Filled his mouth with flesh

And tasted his bloody future.

But the coyote never thought

What the deer had brought.

Later the same day,

Like a prowling hound,

I found civilization and Dan’s Deli.

Soon my white incisors

Cut into crusty drumsticks.

As I pulled flesh from the bones,

With sublime terror,

I remembered the dying deer,

The red stones,

And the coyote

Tearing meat from the thigh.