Buck with a Broken Horn

First your ribs, your half-fleshed face, a hip socket

cocked above blown leavesI call my eager pup

to "leave it"then your rack, atypically narrow,

four points by the western count, sans eyebrow tine,

and finally the broken stump of your right horn

reminds me of the coyote chorus here two weeks ago.

Such jubilation that the owls fell silent.

It could have been the fourteen-point buck

that broke this near the base, a misplaced shot

from some early season hunter. I vote

for Mr. Big, killed days ago and processed

into steaks and summer sausage.

If I go hungry, neighbors say, it's my own fault,

because you'll feed us all, coyote, man, the lust

of does for stronger genes, and in the cold that waits

this year till spring to settle on the land,

the thousand gnawing teeth of mice,

and finally the land itself.