COYOTE

Coyote might have gone

the way of buffalo or beaver

but  he learned to smell

strychnine in the snares,

taught himself not to eat

the trappers’ tainted meat.

 

Shifting his boundaries

he followed bulldozers

east through razed woodlands,

skulking into clearings,

foraging the up-turned earth

for insect eggs and baby mice

until he wound up on a truck

farm in New Jersey

gulping down blackberries,

stripping the savory bushes

till his chin ran red.

 

Now he ranges around Boston

Pensacola, and Poughkeepsie

lured into a maze of safe sidewalks

by the pull of painted T-shirts

and carved fetishes of thread-wrapped stone.

 

People should consider who they conjure:

dung-eater, prophet-with-no-honor,

liar, iconoclast, thief; Trickster Coyote

casting moon shadows,

haunting suburban hedges,

beating the odds.

©2000 Christine Irving