Coyote Crossing

Three years of Coyote Crossing

Wow, can it really be three years since I revamped the old blog into this new one here? I missed saying anything about the (octennial) anniversary of Creek Running North, but three years ago this week was when I dragged the laptop across the road

The Ghost Plums of Evolution

As long as I’m digging old impromptu poems out of comments from years back and giving them pride of place, I might as well do this one, which was in a comment here. Which post also provides context in case you don’t know right offhand what a

Axolotl

[Dug up out of old comments here, in part because I’ve been admiring Nancy Parmalee’s Twitter avatar.]

In a Yucatecan grottl
Lives the mighty Axolotl
Fine-toned skin all pale and mottle
wears the fearsome Axolotl
Fearsomer than any bottle-
driven

Homesick

The jay’s plume has no blue in it.
A trick of light; that’s all it is.
The light refracts, the blue distills
from white, as if these canyon walls
could take the sun on their limestone
and cast it out to show the blue
old sea in which those shells

Useful

[Something I wrote in comments on the old blog a few years back. Found it, decided it deserved its own post. Here it is.]

I am only an old man, sitting here in sunlight
bright morning, springtime in these mountain heights.
The children followed

Sunset is always under construction

I wrote the title of this poem on a friend’s Facebook thread, in a sentence describing road work in my neighborhood. A fellow named Ethan Black responded:

“Sunset is always under construction.” I know you mean the road, but…

And it got me

Notes Toward A Taxonomy of Sadness

Dave Bonta is in fine form:

There’s the sadness of 100-year-old postcards that were written on but never sent, the sadness of an alarm clock that was turned off three minutes before it was due to throb, the sadness of countries too small or

Systems Analysis (a sonnet)

There is no natural taxonomy
that is internally consistent, no
consistent organizing scheme that fits
the world that is. All of your clever rules,
all of the frameworks on which you hang
your understanding of this fractal world
fall short, and do

Freesia

I would cover us in freesia, let their
refulgent scent enclose us, their perfume
as though from the skins of cloves, of ripe grapes
a bowl full of them sunlit,
atop a heavy wood table
moving westward in short increments
sharp joyous scuffs on

Back then

My poetry sucked back then, a sorry mix
of adolescent pain and ignorance,
dormant-tree metaphors, bleak sky and rain,
cold rain — my poems’ rain was always cold —
and I watched, staring out through leaded panes
at winter landscapes, shades of brown

Behold this compost

There’s a long thread over at Dana’s joint entitled “Why Poetry is Bullshit.” It’s a list comprising more than a hundred reasons why, all submitted by Dana’s commenters most of whom, I am guessing, are either poets or aficionados of same. It’s wry

A sweet little wistful nostalgic love poem

I wish that I had never met
the one who set my heart aflame.
All the decisions I regret
I made after I learned her name,
excepting those I’d made before.
I used to long to hear her voice.
I never do that anymore,
which seems to be the wiser choice. … (continues)

Held

There was no time. The flow of time had ceased
as chill night air might check rose-petal jam
in flow across a sampled piece of bread,
or idle thought would make a fingernail
to tarry on its way along the curved
and gentle night topography of spine. … (continues)

Sonnet uncompleted

Tonight I ran, and cursed this aging frame
each mile run cursing harder than the last
each breath more labored, every pace the same
and sorry degradation, milestones passed
chained to my ankles. Streetlit sky a sieve,
the sodden city noise damping

Desire Lines

Longing defines the storied heart. Contentment is pleasant enough, but it kills story. “And they lived happily ever after.” Fukuyama arrived at this realization, though his dystopia — unlike those of Orwell or Huxley — was unintended. But he knew

Your earliest response required

[decided to repost this from here - CC]

We need your trust, o dearest one
your trust, and then your bank account
by war my country is undone
and though I have gained an amount
of treasure fit to see me through
these times of war and civil strife
I

Along the Gaviota coast

Along the Gaviota coast the sea
is calm, expectant, and the lowering sun
raises gray shades to interlace each tree
as if of winter’s silken webs was spun
this scandent fog. Lace tight this splintered wood;
bind well this sundered, weather-riven

To His Coy Ote

Had we but stealth enough, and night,
To be Coyotes would be right
We would climb down and slink each way
To steal a lamb or two a day.
Thou by the western gorges’ side
Shouldst rodents find: I by the tide
Of suburbs would eat cats. I would
Love

In Search Of

It’s been a number of months — no, wait, almost two years — since I indulged in subjecting you all to the found poetry to be found in this site’s search strings.

Clearly this cannot stand.

I went through the top few hundred and picked out the

Robots Versus Coyotes

This weird little piece has its roots in two things that happened yesterday.

The first was that Dana wrote another in her series of Robot Poems, which I liked so much I jokingly told her I wanted to start up a robot poetry tribute band.

The