Re-Play

coyote

I posted the following on this day seven years ago, and I'm re-posting it now because it's pretty much exactly still true. That's how life is around here, especially in summer. Timeless. Seamless. As Jane Hollister Wheelwright once told me, "There's no stream you can follow. Everything becomes cycles. Over and over."

Last night a coyote stood directly below the window, so near that I heard the catch in his throat, the little grab for air, in the pauses between yelps. He lingered for a long time, and I hoped he was flushing out rabbits. Sometimes he barked like an ordinary dog, and other times he summoned up a more traditional howl, and it went like this for quite some time. I grabbed a flashlight and tried for a glimpse, but by that point he had scampered up a hill and into the orchard, and all I could see were the shadowy silhouettes of trees and everyday objects rendered strange and supernatural by the night. I stepped outside onto the deck and was startled by stars. Was Mars the one with the orange hue? It was a warm night, and it was very still. It was nice to be standing out there, and although it was becoming less and less likely that I would ever get back to sleep, that doesn’t matter much when you can sleep in the next day. This is the time of summer when I used to be braced for back-to-school. Maybe the frantic flurry of meetings and preparation would have already begun by now, and I certainly don’t miss it. It feels very luxurious to be able to watch the edge of summer and have a sense that it belongs to me, or that I belong to it. The days are a seamless space, not the background for a dance already choreographed. And this week I got to stay at home and pay attention to my own life. I’m paying attention, of course, to the larger world as well, although in a manner not unlike the way I sought a glimpse of that coyote. I am standing behind a screened window, watching, scanning the horizon, seeing mostly shadows and occasionally looking up to discover there is miracle still happening.

Still here in the dark, flashlight in hand, looking around.