COYOTE, OWL AND OTHER

The fog is there and paints everything. When the world becomes opaque it is more of a mystery. The one that appeared to dream cannot remember the dreams and the waking world is like that also. Downspouts wait adroitly and calmly for more rain. They can seem like neat and interesting appendages of houses and buildings. Just to think of all of them that are in the world. There is a train station and lights, lights that peer out from the thick fog. What do the animals think? Somewhere deep in the valley where nobody goes is the makeshift coyote den. There may be a few coyotes and they curl and sleep but rise a bit, awakened, and one licks dew from some feral shrub leaf that has fallen and sits carried by a previous wind inside the den. No nature walker, dog walker, writer, photographer, or soul good or bad shall ever know about the coyote that licked some moisture from a leaf. And one day after roaming and hunting the forest floors, summits, ridges, valleys, - after fighting and loving and wondering and waking up to morning fogs or suns or night moons and other- the coyote shall pass from the earth. Where does he go? Where does he really and actually go? Shall he remain around there in his astral, in his etheric, in his second body? And does a coyote beautiful and mysterious, spry and curious and hungry, have seven bodies? Is the coyote a hungry ghost? Is the coyote God? Whatever is or is not the case, - the whistle from the station, miles and miles away, - blows. Technology lives with nature. Tracks lay out across the rural lands and the cities too. A bird alights on a traffic sign. That old owl that used to guard the highway, survey the scene,- for so many months together,- and even in the winter I think,- was not seen again. Have you ever witnessed an owl fly? Really actually in real life? An owl seems close to a hawk though people do not say so. Its feathers healthy and interesting, its size something with a bit of robustness, - its line straight. Maybe the owl or another is watching and waiting in the fog. Maybe. 

The mist comes with the wind, and if there be spirits in the trees or earth, by the old vines that grow along fences that keep loams,- then in a dewy fog strewn world is when they must be there. Trucks barrel past, - so worldly, so confident, full of the artifacts and goods. It’s been a long time since we saw the sea. It’s been a long time since the pelicans of the Pacific fly in those mornings high above and across tall palms terrene trunked and verdant leafed. They seemed like dinosaur. And it can be remembered that it was if not the stormy season, then it was a stormy season, - and we waited there as the tide turned itself over and over and over again. Where were the people? - reading and watching and relaxing and being in rooms. Rooms with water and books, clothes and towels, dreams and ideas. It took some time but the fog rolled away and the pelicans fly off, - that clear blue sky and the sand that everybody wants, - it presented itself. And now? - Now the fog, beautiful in its own right, - thick and stronger than the sun, for a time, - settles. If all the owls and coyotes, if the insects and birds, if some wild dog or cat wait in the feral woods, curled, slow, easy, restful and waiting for the sun, - maybe there is one of them that intuited a spark of inspiration, - something that can’t have its origin or logic found, - something that is a bit of verve and nerve and energy that comes from the Entire, the Whole, the beginning and before of existence itself. And due to this thing the insect, animal or bird awakens and darts or runs or dives across the thick trees, through the valley chaparral, and out to the larger open meadows loams and fields.

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