The Coyote (c)

The Coyote

 

It was a movement, dun and slow and still and quick, jerky

as an injured squirrel, an unexplained shape in the grass

and trees beside the river in the October sun, too large

and low and smooth to be a deer, and moving oddly. I looked

over.  And quickly away because then I knew.  The softly opened legs,

the head between them, the other head lifting toward me

as I turned to suddenly study the river, the way the yellow leaves

swirled, the way the far shore was a wash of yellow reflected

from the trees.  I'd seen no breasts, no penis, not even a butt, really,

not that I can bring to mind, no vagina visible, no porn, only

that odd-moving head.  Only the dun color, the soft spread legs

and the far head rising toward me.  No porn, but a surprise, a little

shock.  No clothes visible, there must have been

clothes somewhere.  No eyes, but I wonder

as I try to arrange myself around this double intrusion,

if those eyes turned toward me were like the deer I first imagined,

wide, dark and startled, or like the coyote who paused to look me

in the face, wild and seemingly unafraid, not running,

not walking into the golden woods, waiting instead for me

to leave.  Every separate hair, grey, black, brown, red,

shone in the low orange sun.  There was the coyote

and the nakedness, too.  There were the lovers, disturbed

by me, and me, disturbed by them.  A backpack

of memories torn open, spilling into the bright afternoon.

I tried to place the old images and the lovers somewhere in my heart

but failed. I left them in that space, the space

that followed me all afternoon, the lovers

hanging dun and still, jerking like an injured squirrel

among the poison ivy's flaming leaves.

 

Mary Stebbins Taitt

061002c 1st draft