I find a shock of fresh blood
patterned in the snow,
tip of a tail bitten off,
discarded tough nut of cartilage.
Last night a pack of coyotes
ran down a deer.
My riled dogs pull hard
along the jack-pine trail
of how it ends,
what happens in degrees.
They want to see it all.
II.
The cardinal takes up
his blizzard perch outside
my otherwise vacant window,
the place he lets go his staccato
throat with a work-song of
snowflakes, stellar dendrites,
rimed plates and cups, bullet
rosettes, no two the same, broken
and irregular in a final act
of being, outstretched arms
of lovers in free-fall.