-peace, brother coyote-

two days ago i was walking

through the wetland reserve near our home.

(a small slice of land hugged by houses and strip malls with dentists and smoke shops and a major highway...)

it feels like the last unpaved place in my town.

the last place to see wild grasses and cattails,

willow buds, like pussy willows. 

the native land's natural seasonal sway

you get the sense that the jack rabbit, pheasant, egret, muskrat, red-winged blackbird populations feel a little cramped, but what else can they do?

i go there about every day.

and i saw a coyote, the first since i've moved to roseville.

he seemed bothered, just running about in the grassy space.

an animal without hope,

 a misplaced creature with nothing to loose.

he trotted around in a desperate way, like there was no longer a place for him...

he went up over a slight hill, and sat. exposing himself to the whole world on a newly barren piece of land....it is to be a new movie theater, you see. there is another one across the street.

i sat.

entranced.

soggy for tad poles and protozoa in the spring.

crunchy and hot and golden in the summer.

lonely and wild and desperate and lost.


there are some subjects that are hard for me to broach.

my stomach shrinks and i'd rather not read pilgrim at tinker creek at the moment, thank you very much.

i'd rather not post this, and stumble over the depth of my feeling,

but it needs to be addressed; acknowledged.

i don't live in the woods anymore.

reading natural histories only pangs me: i am so far removed from a healthy ecosystem.

in this small meadow is a bike path.

here, a googled image of a coyote.

it is as if the city-planners preserved a small space to illustrate what wilderness might have looked like as an educational tool: a relic.

stuffed coyote.

i might be melodramatic but this is as real as it gets, folks. real. the land has been cannibalized.