Moonlight & The Coyote's Lamentations...

Tuesday night dapples its wrists with the scent of fallen apples and yesterday’s raindrops. Alone out here – amidst the shadows of your hometown streets – you are a secret known only to yourself. Padding silent as a quick shade toward the fields at the very edge, you watch the silhouettes of your neighbors dance between their yellow incandescent bulbs and their gingham kitchen curtains. Those vague shapes allude to myriad possibilities: two bodies at the cusp of easing into oneness, a heavy woman’s outline swinging a tenderizing mallet, that anonymous toddler drinking from his tippy-cup of water.

No more than a half-hearted spectator to those empty figures – without dwelling on the stories of the figures whose movement you’ve seen – you move along at the same easy pace. The thick darkness deepens about your head and your heart and you suddenly feel – at some essential level – that you’re still awaiting instructions, seeking a destination for your journey, hoping to stumble upon an intended end, a recognizable point of stopping and turning and returning. At least you know what path you follow.

Leading on, the sidewalk unfurls in measureless extensions beneath the fuzzy glow of the mercury vapor streetlamps. Drifting in thought, you listen for the song of the lumber mill blade telling from across the railroad tracks.

“No,” you hear your own voice whisper. “The Silverton mill closed eighteen years ago and hasn’t been heard from since.”

Quickly intruding upon the quiet which follows, you hear your own voice respond. “And likewise with so many of the elders who raised you, the teachers who taught you, the tender lovers who held you. Eighteen years gone by and they followed the quickening drumbeat of time into a nothingness you’ve filled with helpless nostalgia. Poor sucker, everything fades and you should learn that your history never existed…”

Moving along you think of your friend M. who asked you “Do you feel like crying sometimes… at all…”

“Yes,” that first voice of your's replies so quietly as to barely be heard. “Yes, but the tears won’t come…”

A yawn pulls your mouth wide until your jaw-joint pops. You realize that it is late, very late to be on the way with no idea where you’re going. The time has come – you think – to hurry along without wasting more time. Out west, the moon is halfway to the crest of the Coast Range, halfway to disappearing altogether. Running now, rushing toward your uncertain end, you hear a sound which stops you in your tracks. Somewhere in the distant cottonwood trees – out in the space between your warm body and the cold lunar disc – the voice of a coyote – or of something akin to such an animal – rises like a slow lamentation toward the stardust constellations.