Coyote

I have rejected you, longed for you, lost you and sought you all in the span of a morning. I am finding you, now, again, in photos and memories and a song. At least I am feeling.

These morning hours of solitude are proving to be more useful than I originally thought.

Ojai, CA July, 2011

So much of you, and of us, is defined by the space that exists determinately between us. It is like the third person the two of us make. Always I am touching you, seeing you, hearing you through a veil, however thin, that hangs where I cannot get to it, can't tear it down. Sometimes the veil is lifted and I touch you soul to soul and look into your eyes and you are looking back. Like that time in the car, when you looked at me and let yourself be open. Then you got scared and lowered the veil again and I wait for you now, always, to come back. But I don't know. Maybe this is the human condition. To know that you are alone, no matter what, like Rilke says, that we would become guardians of one another's solitude. But I keep waiting. And sometimes, when my feeling for you is the most full, I am painfully aware of this thin separation and it seems like a gulf of lightyears. Sometimes it doesn't matter how thin it is, because it is a thousand miles high and a thousand miles wide in each direction and I never pass through it.

This morning on my way to school, I saw a coyote run out in front of me. I was just about to turn the corner to the long drive that winds its way to the art department when a great big crow flew out low and directly in front of me at the speed of light. Then, dashing behind it, was a coyote. It turned its head and looked at me as I stared, startled and transfixed. I was filled with so much electricity from seeing it, running, totally wild and totally unconcerned with me or with the city. Something in me shot up and was awakened. The coyote was lithe and light as air and seemed to me to be made perfectly well for all that it needed to be.

I ran after it and turned the corner but it was gone. The only strange thing is that all around was desert landscape, and I cannot image a single place where it could have disappeared to. Maybe it was a shaman like Don Juan and turned into something else before I could see it. Maybe so.

Later, after class, I sat down later next to a lavender bush to write about identity. I thought I might see you. I found a piece of rose quartz at the base of the lavender. All these things are stirring in me, big feelings like a flooding river or a heavy cloud. Someday they are going to break, and we had better have an arc to ride it out in.

 

I will keep waiting.