Please excuse me

while we stop what we are doing

to listen to the sound of coyotes

on this cold and moonless night.

 

At first it could be mistaken

for the high pitched laughter of the neighbor girls

playing volleyball in the yard

just up the road from the house,

 

or the giddy sound of hysterical revelers

at a party on somebody’s back deck;

but, then again, perhaps more like

some freaky version of the music of the spheres,

 

or the shrieking of locomotive brakes

on a runaway train

hurtling down the tracks

under a blank midnight sky.

 

Really – a sound so primal and so wild

it will make the hairs on your neck stand on end.

Even the dogs hasten to come in

from the dark, cutting short

their usual bedtime routine.

In the Cool of the Evening