Coyotes

[Exerpt from RUN]

​

They cloud me every time.

The first howl, a shapeshifter in the doubt of night.

 

But the second is unmistakable.

Soul-shakeable. 

It sends a chill.

it will fill you with unbreakable fright.

 

You pray for light. 

As their ratchet song crescendos,

Innuendos 

form a cape

round the nape of your neck,

It billows out and round about you.

Just what are they insinuating?

Things you’re hating to hear.

Truth, the true sound of fear.

 

Their verses have you pinned,

reliving all the ways you’ve sinned,

shuffling through your mind’s rolodex.

It’s grim and complex.

 

But why 

am I so afraid?

It’s just a bed; the very one I’ve made.

And if I’m so averse, I’ll change the sheets to ones I find less perverse.

Then, is it done?

Will their yelps still reach me there?

What’s undercover in their yellow eyes, as they pierce and stare

beyond the glass,

in canyon trenches?

 

But strange…

how their call quenches 

my thirst for consideration.

A reiteration of the urgency from which I hide.

It’s slathered thick with pride.

 

But they claw at it with their clatter,

remind me of what’s the matter,

remind me that fear is kind,

make me chase it with the mind of a wild dog in the dark,

so, I can see 

in the glass, that it is me:

 

the yellow eyes,

all the noise,

the wild, rip-roaring choice

to undomesticate what’s beneath.

Bark at the moon and make fangs of my teeth.

 

I’ll shed a tear,

But only to remind me of what’s growing near.

The life water I crave,

now a stone’s throw from the cave 

I’m excavating.

 

And there I’ll stay

But only while day is bright.

Because come night,

I sever the silence;

assault it with my sonic violence,

with all the calls I once needed to hear,

as I chase,

with haste,

a thousand forms of fear.