Coyote in the Dark, Coyotes Remembered

The darkest thing met me in the dark.

It was only a face and a brace of teeth

that held no words, though I felt a salty breath

sighing in my direction.

Once, in an autumn that is long gone,

I was down on my knees in the cranberry bog

and heard, in that lonely place,

two voices coming down the hill, and I was thrilled

to be granted this secret,

that the coyotes, walking together can talk together,

for I thought, what else could it be?

And even though what emerged

were two young women, two-legged for sure

and not at all aware of me,

their nimble, young women tongues

telling and answering, and though I knew

I have believed something probably not true,

yet it was wonderful to have believed it.

And it has stayed with me

as a present once given is forever given.

Easy and happy they sounded,

those two maidens of the wilderness

from which we have-

who knows to what furious, pitiful extent-

banished ourselves.

I have my whole life longed for animals to human speak through voice or thought transfer, such as seen in the movie Avitar.  What I would I give to be able to talk and walk with a nonhuman companion at my side!  In recent years this has lessened a bit as I learn more about behavior, interspecies neurobiology, and cognitive ethology, and apply all of this through conservation behavior.  What has shifted is that I am better at listening.

To me the Barred Owl laughs at the world in the night, well, maybe it's not laughing really, but no less clear for me.  For I feel the coolness and dark of the night, the feathered companion, competitor, or prey calling in the night, and I yearn to bring something good back to the three in the hollow of my nest tree.  As Owl perhaps I don't describe in this way, but as human my mirror neurons light up as I imagine myself staring at the blood red eclipsed moon.  I too fly silently in the night.  We have not left the wilderness.  It lives in us: our brains, our blood, our DNA, and in you. 

We walk and talk together - with words, or without words. In this space, may no beings be banished from our hearts or from this earth.

With whom will you walk and talk today?

Night Flight – January 17, 2010

Traveling at thirty thousand feet, we see
How much of earth still lies in wilderness…

…How many miles, or night, or years to go
Before the mind, with its hug ego paling,
Before the heart, all expectation spent,
Should read the meaning of the scene below?…

..And settled softly on the earth once more…
---Discarding smoothly, as we disembark,
All thoughts that held us wiser for a moment
Up there alone, in the impartial dark.


In this full poem there are two occurrences of the world “miracle;” One to describe the lights of civilization against the earth’s dark wilderness, and the other to describe the possibility of our space ship overshooting the earth, resulting in us spending our days hurtling out into the depths of dark space. How do we live with the gift of the egoless darkness in our life and the egofull light in our life? Both are miracles and are to be praised highly. We are such fierce creatures born out of space, out of earth, out of oceans, and out of Africa. We are a miracle we exist and the further miracle, where wonder is yet to be born, is that we may gain the wisdom that comes from the vision of looking down at one, awesome earth. This is a vision that would unite us across cultures and species. But to know this wonder, to live in beauty, we must be lost in the dark.

Where have you been lost in the dark, and gained wisdom?