Coyotes By Abby Ripley

 

Like a chorus of shouts in the dark,

Ripping the transparent curtain

That wraps the landscape in night.

They have silently walked on padded

Feet between the grasses in the

Field toward the prey which they have

Encircled and which, out of sensing its

Fate, quivers in wide-eyed terror.

Death comes so swiftly to be

Painless, and all that was, isn’t, as the

Predatory social order takes its share,

And slinks through the night curtain

Into the day where vigilant sleep ensues.

               

Abby Ripley is a seventy eight year old and has had a very rich and varied life. She grew up on a ranch on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana and has spent time as a Peace Corps volunteer, a travel agent, a life insurance field agent, an editor, a fine art photographer and exhibitor, a painter, and now a writer/poet. She crusades on behalf of African people who suffer from tungiasis. She has been named a poetry finalist three years in succession by Adelaide Literary Magazine.