Animal Dreams

I               Coyote

On days like this

when evening ripens underneath the rocks

and the high ground glows

I jump from the mountain

and slide on a beam of sunlight

down into the streets below.

The wander hours begin

 

where Forty-fourth Street intersects

with the strip of dry grass and mesquite trees

that runs past the park

and enters the night

with a clear view of the stars.

I’m invisible from this moment

 

1. I walk. I run. I

carry the moon in my teeth

and I sit

at the seventh hole where the golf

course sleeps. I am watching

a man with no home on his mattress

placed beneath the bridge

where darkness runs

 

under Forty-eighth Street

and flows toward the pond where

it slips into the water. There is

so much to induce wonder

here on the ground and I already

forget to ask the neighborhood

insomniacs if I need

a password to enter the sky?

Blessing the Animals

 

Here’s a cat who’d take

the dinner from a china plate but bless

her anyway; she doesn’t know

the rules of etiquette. Consider the coyote

blessed when he stops in the middle of the street

and looks back at a pedestrian

his wildness has touched. Bless the starlings

who were fruitful and

multiplied from coast to coast, and bless

the common pigeon for

turning waste lots into food. Bless

the rattlesnake who curls up at a trail’s edge

by stepping carefully around him,

and save

for the jaguar who returns to

ancient hunting grounds

a special blessing that will follow him through

darkness. Shall we dare

to shower favor on the rats who climb the final

daylight and cavort

in yards and vegetable beds? Or spare

an extra prayer for the Great horned owl

when he is done with ferrying souls

to comfort and a resting place?

When the Cooper’s hawk is waiting

for a mourning dove, be generous as this world

in which an ocean is the predator

and a river is the prey.

 

II             Rattlesnake

When time sheds its skin

I am waiting.

                    Beside a rock being warmed

in the sun until it bites.

                                    Coiled

into a question mark and counting

each drowsy minute

passing by.

                 The desert rubs

against me when it rains.

                                         Soft

as a mouse the moon

escapes a cloud.

                         Thunder rolls

into my open mouth.

                                 I’ve eaten lightning

but can’t remember time

or place, only

                     know it burns

like any hungry summer night.

Woodpecker

 

A woodpecker knocks on the door of the world

in rhythm

                with lost typewriters

asking the eternal question Why?

No answer from the sky.

Let me in, let me in; he’s a hammer

and a heartbeat with a single tempo

mind and already an echo

of himself

               as he picks his spot

and nails fate to the wall.

III            Hummingbird

We’re all reflections of the sun

until darkness folds us

each into ourselves. We  sleep

the cold sleep which preserves our dreams

on ice

 

and when we dream it brings

visions of becoming

a drop of light miraculous

in air. But look

at sunrise on the mountain when

 

it weighs as little

as a goldfinch

and has wings wider than the hawk’s

 

who passes daily with the desert

for a shadow.

I sleep inside a raindrop.

I wake up on a slender stem

that arcs

 

between the flowers that

taste of survival.

And when the day

 

folds its wings

dreams are all that flow

through the mind while

the body freezes for as long

 

as it takes to be luminous again.

Recount

 

The goldfinch sky awakens

slowly, one bird

at a time and the world

falls into place:

                      Mexico beside

America, the desert sliding underneath

the border, everybody’s money

locked away and waiting

for the sun to rise and

interest rates to warm. Another close

election comes

                       down to counting

loose change in the galaxy: a comet

burning up against a pocketful of stars.