Coyote
moves like fog,
present
but obscure,
smoke
rising from the ground
descending,
dissolving,
storm
weather as my father called it:
“Prepare
for cold and wet
when
the smoke won’t rise above the trees.”
Coyote
is the fog that is and isn’t,
never
clearly visible in sunlight,
never
fully absent,
like a
mist that creeps just above the ground
Coyote
is fastest chasing dawn over the hills,
a
figment of fog crossing the crown
and
scurrying along the bottoms,
settling,
watching, waiting.
Coyote
is the wind that makes six hens five,
the
sound of movement where nothing is but fog,
the
rustling of hairs along my arm
when
fog hangs stubbornly along the fence,
straddling,
obscuring, pausing.
Coyote
is the cold and wet my father knew
that
kills the rooster and the sucking calf –
fog
with footprints leaving
bloodstained
calling cards
to blow
in morning’s sun.
Universal Attraction
The
hotel bar in San Antonio
was
crowded on the last night of the conference
and I
wanted nothing more than two small
drinks
then bed. But as I listened to
Hispanic-Irish
poets coo and woo
in
hybrid tongues, I saw you, yellow rose,
acknowledge
admiration for the woman
weaving
images of soulscapes with her
words.
I felt a tug in me, a wordless
flick,
that wasn’t bourbon in the throat,
but
quick revision of the universe.
Twelve
short feet loomed large between us like the
void of
space between my planet and
another,
mined with lifeless asteroids,
so
dangerous. The second drink was short of
what I
needed for a spacewalk so I
signaled
for a third. And when I drank and
looked
again my system was one planet
short
as well, and I had only muted
and not
a dreamed companion for my bed.
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