Coyote Song

Inside the night, this hospital, asylum, this party for those undone by desire, forever unslaked, inside a house inside the night, I'm inside this house with eight beams and moonlight pulling on the past through skylights, this house of white noise, wind and dry heat, lonely house on a ridge line, house of ordinary shame, my sister's house with corrals and outbuildings around it, and beyond that, the dog patrolling, and beyond that, skirts and folds of the mountain rising in rumpled geologic scrolls into the range. At the center beneath the moon's silence that nothing ever changes, muffled in blankets with fear beside me on my little bench of sleep, I can hear their voices, could be three or twenty-three, unhinged saints gabbling to their shadows, or panty-sniffers, drug-trippers in all flavors past vanilla, could be Birnam wood on the move, the shriek of its roots thirsty and air-brushed, or a pack of lunatics crooning norteño songs. What is certain is advent. They're coming down, coming towards the heart beneath the feathers, coming for what can't be protected, on a beam of dread, riding that ray. I'm listening, my eyes snapped-open inside darkness, other people in other rooms who know how to sleep through a night like this night, thrown against the roundness of the world which is desire. The old bitch guards this night on the ranch, half shepherd, half other, this is her watch, she gallops the perimeter, anxious to sound like more than one dog, though she's going arthritic and her paws strike the hard ground. Now they quiet, penitents, lunatics, marauders and ragpickers,quiet. Only one left behind and the moon is his hieroglyph, one creature padding down the mountain, coming closer. Coyote knows a good joke, he only wants to let her in on it. He can't stop laughing, can't stop crying, can't stop licking the crevices clean, licking safety and duty until they're empty. I hear the dog listening, ears lifted. Coyote's tongue slides into night air, pressing narcotic vowels through wonder, through longing and longing and wonder awaken. She's close to that edge, that border in the night where one thing becomes another and even an old dog who's worked a ranch eleven years feels the urge to let loose, blow this little settlement,go wild. Clouds loose and blue in the arms of the moon, slant light on this mountain raking us, the dog and I, we feel the pull. Imagine a woman trying to come between coyote and the female he's after when she knows what is dark and offers itself and vanishes has come for her at last? The body wants what it can't have, to follow the path of thirst through the rent in the wire beyond the corral. The dog doesn't move, but who knows better than she the small outpost death has set up in her, maybe she's all desire now to slip under the moon and chase down that lure. Coyote wheedles and croons another minute or two, then lopes off, calling over his shoulder in a language even I can understand, the right names for things not kept in heaven.