I went hunting with my dad once
Around August or September
I was younger but old enough to remember

Windhowls of the deep forests
Sounded like owls everywhere
Straying from our camper - I didn't dare

It didn't take long
   It was almost too soon
Anticlimactic & too simple to be true

Just planted ontop of the weeds
Just a few feet into the brush
Lay a pile of stuff

Disshevled and unkempt
Motionless and covered in burrs
Save for the sleight of a gust to weave thru its fur

The bones weren't white or polished
The cartoons had misled
It sat there in pieces & browning, instead

Skeletal, like random things tossed together
A velcro roadkill tumbleweed
Dried out and unable to bleed.

My dad told me it was a coyote
   I thought,
There's no way that was a coyote - a coyote?

It's just a pile of stuff