Wild Love

New Moon, January 21, 2023
July 2019

This woman speaks to coyote, they gather around her in her dreams. Or they used to until she became bereft and forgot about them.  But they did not forget her, loyal, they are her Spirit pack.  Her wails of grief call them to her, they circle and sniff her hands, the Alpha female opens her jaws, wide, sinking her teeth into the tattered robe the woman wears, this woman who is clearly lost.  No senses to lead her.  Coyote pulls her to a clearing in the forest, the woman thinks will she tear my flesh, sink her teeth into my aging neck, sever my jugular.  Her hope rides on this possibility, a mercy killing.  What better way to die and die she wants to.

Coyote leaps up, the woman’s breath catches as two large paws pin her against the tree.  They fall into each other, entering the dark pools of the other’s eyes.  Coyote knows the woman is easy prey, willing prey.  Offering herself to the other world she goes limp.   Waiting.  Light streams through the trees, fanning itself out into arcs of light, like a blessing the woman cannot see. 

Sunrise and still they stand, cicadas sing, acorns fall and still they dance this dance of predator, prey, this dance of souls, this dance of destiny.  Falling into each other deeper and deeper, the wild coyote, the woman wild with grief,  their energies reach for each other, their kinship established. 

Do Coyotes eat their own, the woman wonders.  Coyote grins.  The woman’s hands grow fur, her feet grow fur, her hair is blown back in a sudden and powerful wind.  Her dead mates and pups swim before her eyes,  Coyote has decided.  She blows into the woman’s mangled heart, the trees sway, acorns pelt the ground, the woman resists, Coyote persists.  Debris flies around these two, dead skin, rotten flesh, blood form a whirlwind obscuring them, making of them a dustup, obscuring their features.  Just winds’ creation, nothing more.

The dust settles, coyote looks into the woman’s eyes still, wind travels on, Coyote pants from the effort to expose the bare earth of the woman’s heart, a heart broken of fault lines, chasms that shatter hope, and limbs, chasms that eat a life or transform it.  Or perhaps the eating of the life is the way.  The woman doesn’t know, Coyote does.  But she’s not telling.