The Second Coyote

"I have your coyote,"
the message says.
"Come get it,
it's freaking
everybody out."

She is frozen
on a snowbank
her red gold tail
flutters
in the breeze.

She seems so alive
I stroke her
like She is
my long lost dog.

But She is dead.

Shot by an old timer
who sits and waits for her
to take his bait
before he pulls the trigger.

"Pests,"
he sputters
Damn coyotes eat
his venison.

I do not tell him
that like humans,
coyotes reproduce
when threatened.

In my mystic's hands
I carry this dog's spirit.

I have tracked her
through the hemlocks
ash and beeches
across the swamps
at midnight
I have heard her
sing and laugh
and call.

I have touched
her menstrual blood.

I raise my arms
to the wind
and ask,
"What do I do
with the flesh
and bones
and the beautiful
soft fur coat?"

I google
"preserving skeletons"
and find the algorithms
to create the perfect curve
of a computer skeleton.

But there are no numbers here
in this world of flesh and bone.

"Boil it,"
my brother tells me.
"Soak it in water
until the meat comes off."

"Bury it in sand
and let the maggots
do the dirty work."

Dead eyes stare at me.
The muscles are hard
beneath my kneading hands.

There are no numbers here.

There is antiseptic clean
in the rotting flesh
and blood that stains
my fingers brown.

This song dog
trickster
gray ghost
rises
to explain
that there is
no order
in the chaos
of the spirit
no rhyme
no reason
no numbers.

Only Life
Only Death
in the blood
and guts
of what binds
us to the tendons
and the ligaments
of life.

There is only
our own willingness
to participate
in each other's minds
and to witness
each other's lives.

I take
this Spirit
into me
and She
opens
my Eyes
my Ears
my Heart
to Life.

Eschatalogy

I pluck
bones from coyote
scat.

the strings
of my guitar
vibrate
the litter
on the forest
floor.

the pups
eyes
open to the sounds
of deep dank
dirt.

the notes
pull
hard
inside my fingers
grow green
with rain
crow calls
blue jay answers
hawk soars
over
all.

Coyote scat
a knot
of guts
two rodent ribs
and the strings
of my guitar.

Canis Latrans

My tortoise shell cat, Lily, climbs into my lap. She will not let me write. She demands that I stroke her chin and forehead, stimulating all those scent glands that were she a wild cat, she would be rubbing against trees and rocks. Instead, she is content to mark me as I tell her about Coyote. It is important that she listen because she is prey and Coyote is predator. It is a primal, inextricable relationship.

Canis latrans is an ancient being. Older than the wolf, Coyote has walked this planet for some sixty million years. Long before our own arrival, Coyote first appeared in a time called by those who chronicle eras, the Eocene. Coyote evolved on the open plains of the North American continent after the decline of the dinosaurs. They flourished from the Arctic tundras to the high plateaus of Central America, advancing and retreating with the glaciers. While all that remains of the sabre-toothed tiger of that era is a fossil, the ancestors of Coyote that feasted on that tiger's flesh still roam the landscape.

The appearance of Coyote in these eastern hills is still somewhat of a mystery. It was not until 1957 that the existence of the first coyote in Massachusetts was confirmed. The tale of its travels from the central plains west and south and finally north and east is one of adaptation and interbreeding with other canids. One hypothesis has lone coyote dispersers mating with feral dogs. This coydog was the first of the eastern coyotes. This scenario, however, is unlikely since such a breeding does not result in a strong viable species. The habits of feral dogs do not support the proliferation of the species. Coyotes are pack animals and they rely on both the male and female to raise midwinter litters. Male dogs are not motivated by paternal instincts and single parenting is risky business in the competitive world of the coyote. Such litters would have low survival rates. A more probable theory is that the western coyote bred with the eastern Canadian wolf. This makes for a larger coyote than its western cousin and would also account for the different colorings of the eastern coyote.

I continute to tell Lily that there are fewer coyotes in the woods this winter. There are not nearly as many tracks as in past years. I have also seen more snowshoe hare and red fox prints. I remember the dead coyote that I carried out of the brook last spring. It had been shot. I also remember the farmers that I met early one morning. They were shooting coyotes at the edge of their fields. They were protecting their livestock. Hunters have been out killing coyote to protect the deer that they hunt in the fall. Coyote is on the most wanted list and in many states, they are hunted year round. They get no respect.

I tell Lily that she is in far greater danger from the coyotes than the livestock and the deer are. Coyotes take house cats. Still, I believe there is a place in these woods for the wily predator. It fills the niche of the wolf and the cougar and man. We are all predators and prey in the natural order of things. This competition for survival is what strengthens the species.

Lily sits up and stretches. She kneads her claws on my legs. She jumps from my lap and heads to the front door, scratching to go out. I open it and let her into the wild.

Tracking Coyote

I look out at an inch of new snow. It makes for great tracking. "I am here," I tell myself as I strap on my snowshoes. "I am here to track Coyote."
I was captured by Coyote in the spring some thirty years ago when I first wandered these hills with my old dog Gabe. We were following a logging road when we came upon a litter of coyote pups frolicking. Gabe didn't see them, but I stopped dead in my tracks and my hackles went up. The coyotes stopped, too. We stared at each other. I imagine I was the first two-legged they'd ever seen. Slowly I turned, not wanting Gabe to pick up their scent and become interested. I began to sing as I retraced my steps and the coyotes fanned out around us and escorted us all the way home.
My imagination was captured. The eastern coyote began speaking to me and I have been on its trail ever since. It has sung below my bedroom window and answered my calls from the summit of a mountain. I have watched a pack in the dunes of Provincelands and I have carried a bloody coyote out of the stream where it died. I have read about all the coyote extermination efforts and how Coyote just keeps on going on, producing more offspring as she becomes more threatened. I have delved into the mythology of Coyote--the trickster, the shape shifter, the grey ghost--and I have gained a great respect for this creature that is so much more than just a wily scavenger. Coyote is a sacred force that speaks from a world that is endangered and Coyote refuses to die.
As Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz write: "Coyote and his kin represent the sheerly spontaneous in life, the pure creative spark that is our birthright as human beings and that defies fixed roles and behavior. He not only represents some primordial creativity of our earlier days, but he reminds us that such celebration of life goes on today, and he calls us to join him in the frenzy. In an ordered world of objects and labels, he represents the potency of nothingness, of chaos, of freedom--a nothingness that makes something of itself. There is great power in such a being..."
I spot a coyote track in the snow. It is a direct register. The hind foot falls directly into the front footprint and it looks like a one-legged creature trotting through the woods. The prints are good. There is a visible X in the middle of the paw. Her path is straight. She is not curious, but headed somewhere. I follow her up to the top of a knoll. She stops and surveys the landscape. This is her world. This is my world. We are both here today in the new snow. I take a deep breath and head home.