Trickster coyote knows how to navigate the world’s tricks.
When all is in confusion, pandemic of chaos,
coyote knows the route through the
darkness.
She sees better in the night than I.
She guides me.
Coyote is at home
in tricksterville. Nothing new there.
Or rather, everything new and constantly
changing is her eternal reality. Although,
they say to keep a coyote out of
your backyard, constantly rearrange your outdoor furniture; she doesn’t like
novelty.
Nevertheless, trotting along, following her nose,
Coyote leads me
safely through the valleys of darkness to my destination morning home.
About this poem:
This week a coyote visited me twice. Once in a dream, guiding me on a
long dark path to my home. And for the first time, I saw a coyote in our
neighborhood. 2:30 in the afternoon she stood motionless on the neighbor’s
lawn, next to the massive Douglas Fir where a pair of bald eagles rested one
night a few summers back. She stood there for a few minutes in the quietude of
quarantine. Instead of coyote as trickster, she appeared to me as calm, certain
and trustworthy. She led me home in my dream, and stays close in my
neighborhood.
