TWO SIDES TO LUCK

Mid-afternoon, after-rain beneath cottony cumulus
with sails set north trailing the long-awaited storm,

a lone coyote’s husky bark, cows and calves
across the creek frozen alertly upon the green—

I must assume the feral pigs now have had their fill
of the young bull I had to kill two weeks ago

with broken leg sunk deep into a squirrel hole
while sparring with his mates passing idle time

with unemployed testosterone awaiting the long,
hog-truck trip home to a feedlot in Idaho.

Stiff hide and disconnected bones don’t care
having filled the bellies of our sanitary engineers.