WILD COYOTE

Meanwhile, your moss fern died; my gloriosum sprang a whole new leaf; the twins upstairs have learned to walk and then to run; the sunrise crawls your pillow into night. Meanwhile, the Panhandle joggers flash

velutinous knees, and as I quarterback my Two-Stamp Tuesday sandwich through their slipstream, I want to shout, *You don't have to be good!* But what do I know— I wear a bathrobe into afternoon; I am not alive

with credibility. By the sign we once ignored, *Do Not Feed the Wild* *Coyotes*, the trash heaps outside its bin—boba cups, clamshells, little green dog bags—and the coyote, too, long-toothed

and lonely. I know that I should leave him. I should leave him as I leave the beer cans on the bike lane, the mailers on the stoop the planter's rhubarb growing into mint. Meanwhile, the coyote can't read

the language of his shunning. Tell me your despair, and I'll tell you mine: the clean blue air, the deep of trees, the heading home again. The world goes on. I let my body love what it loved.