COYOTES

Yapping, yelping in deep night canyons,
coyotes wake something in me that rises only at night;
some sleepy sentry of the soul
stirs to stand guard against faceless fear
waiting always at the edge of knowing,
threatens like thunder from formless clouds,

takes my timid sleepy midnight self
and grabs it by the throat.
What is this shadow thing
not real enough to do me harm
yet closer still than animals that prowl
and howl in darkness of the night?

At midday, running like a sheep dog
through the open low-land marshes, silent,
loping in sunlight across green pasture,
the coyote is not a thing to fear and hide from.
I’d like to whistle for it to come and sit
beside me where the river meets the sea.

It is the animal inside me that I fear,
the beast that lives in me and wakes at night
to stalk my unsure self dropped by sleep
into wildernesses I have no map for.