Escape

We bedded down for the night
under the abducting stars,

wondering which
would nail us to individual crosses
in a worldwide holocaust,

which would herd us into a zoo
extermination or harvest?

Our made-up stories around the campfire
hissing like burning snakes in a B-movie
with UFO aliens poking at our backsides,

waking in the disoriented darkness
reaching for a woman lost in the past
and gone in a blink.

A coyote howling from a hilltop
needing a mountain to see a line of light
from the city we escaped from ...

Then a growing gang of coyotes laughing
at our flinching bodies
trapped below in our dreams.