Poems from the 12-Hour Couplets Contest: Howl, Danny Fitzpatrick

Danny Fitzpatrick is the author of a few books. 

He lives in New Orleans and edits a journal called Joie de Vivre.

Howl

You heard it first, that loneliness aloft

against the purblind sky, the certain, soft

advance of six coyotes through the oaks.

We shrank, admiring how the moonlight smoked

upon that song, how the scavenged reek shone

and shrouded those sleek ghosts of tongue and bone.

That night you’d taught me how to see the past

as part of what was promised us at last.

You touched my throat and whispered they were gone,

and soon we too arose and soon went on,

hunched against the cold without a word

for future griefs the hounds had overheard.