Happy to have my piece “Old Man Coyote” in the latest issue of Luna Arcana, an arts & cultural print journal from the Mojave High Desert.
Scroll down to read “Old Man Coyote” or click here to read the entire issue online, for free, on the Luna Arcana website. Then you can take in the artwork and photographs too.
“Old Man Coyote”
Long ago there was only water. Coyote was floating on a log when he saw the ducks. “We are the only creatures in an empty world,” he told them. “One of you should dive down and see if there is a solid bottom under all this water.”
The red mallard dove first. He was gone a long time. When he came up he said, “There is dirt down there but I didn’t get any.” The small pin feathered duck dove next but he didn’t get any dirt either. Then the grebe volunteered. “I will bring you some dirt my brother” he told Coyote. The grebe was gone a very long time. When he came back to the surface he had a small bit of dirt between his webbed feet.
Coyote spread the mud around and made solid ground. He made rocks and stones and hills and trees and grass. He scooped out ponds and streams and filled them with fish. He created East, West, North, and South and plenty of room to wander around in.
From this came everything else.
Where Coyote came from, only the Creator knows.
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Measured, marked, and mapped. Weighed, named, divided and divvied up. Explained, assessed. Rough edges smoothed. Contradictions reconciled.
Dead butterflies on pins mounted in a box with a velvet backdrop.
Nothing stirs.
Then Old Man Coyote comes and kicks the empty skull of that static world—Ayiiieee!
Finds the flaw, makes a crack,
An opening in the pseudo-certainty, fixed positions, and Truth.
Dust gets in. Scent of creosote and light.
Coyote’s road is a track in dry sand going everywhere and nowhere.
Ayiiieee—Coyote was going there!
Sanity is discovering the patterns and letting them dissolve, salt in water.
So much good arises from happy accident.
This happens over and over again.
Old Man Coyote walked in the first twilight and howled at the moon, soul mate in fickleness and fidelity.
When his tail tells him to make dirt and lie down, he does so.
Home is where his feet touch the earth.
If we are alone it is because we have forgotten him and his way.
Changing Person, Chief of the Human People, the one who makes things right.
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Some mornings I hear coyote yipping and yapping with glee and sorrow as he runs on the rocky hills that surround our cabin. I go outside to catch a glimpse of him, lean and hungry, trotting down the sandy wash between creosote bushes and burro weed on his way to the next valley. I hear his yelping far more often than I actually see him, note his scat. I sense his presence, like a ghostly desert dervish, and find his tracks in the dirt of the driveway where he danced in the desert darkness while I slept.
Old Man Coyote reminds me that my time in this beautiful world is short and encourages me to enjoy all of it. “Life is serious play,” he says, turning to pull a prickly seed from his fur coat, shaggy and rough in the colors of dirt and gravel. “If you must have a goal, aim to be a master of opportunity. Learn to make some thing out of something else. Show all of your teeth when you smile.”
He grins and lifts his tail high in the air. “Today the ground beneath you is solid,” he says, “so why not dance?”
