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
I honor these reminders of what it takes to survive and even to prosper. We all need a bit of trickster in us.
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