Up The Fall Snow Down Flake

Late winter, Coyote staring at a creek

This side of madness

is the last place of the downy flake.

In the up of the waterfall,

only the mad look would know to 

among the worn stones round and smooth,

where water like rambunctious children flows,

where leaves like rudderless boats

for the seasons dried

to their next life are carried,

where up the flake of the snow down falls.

From: The Coyote Writings

by Marc A. Crowley writing as Coyote

Soon to be published, p. 5

The Grassland Paladin

Hereford, Arizona

Winter

Alone in my gazebo at midnight, 

I’m wrapped in a blanket; there are no voices,

no wind, but the chill of the grassland is flooded

by the half-moon’s light. A few coyotes bark,

great horned owls sing their four notes

to each other from the tops  

of the utility poles along my road.

I have to stifle my inclination 

to talk to myself. I’d be an intrusion

in the order of the night,

though my neighbor’s rooster

lets loose a reminder that 

he is awake and on duty,

a paladin assuring everyone

that he is in charge 

of the grassland’s tranquility.

From: Small Places, Big Places Everywhere

Unpub MS p. 27

An Unexpected Chorus

Hereford, Arizona 

June 

Like an orchestra without a conductor,

the spring winds meandered

in a confusing atmosphere,

fearful of commitment 

to one season or the other.

They brought rain at the wrong time

of the year, but no one complained.

Long and deliberate, these storms

through the grassland, with cloudy days 

that looked like December, 

with distant lightning,

not what we would normally expect.

Such an unusual June it was,

a blessing that the heat didn’t rise 

too quickly, that wind blew softly at night,

that water from slow, circling clouds

came and went, came and went.

Awakened at 3:00 AM from my 

dreamscape into a light rain,

lying in a warm bed of combined solace 

and excitement, I listened to the splatter 

and distant rumble mix with the 

rancorous howling of a coyote chorus.

Then I remembered that whatever arrives 

from unexpected places, music comes with it.

From: Small Places, Big Places,

And Every Other Thing In Between 

Unpub. MS p. 50

Start A Fire

Coyote lays it on the line to some 

backsliding Boomers

There Earth, there Heaven, those I know.

From the Divine, interventions we crave.

It’s the Divinity close we want to touch.

We of course cannot, as I have before said.

Poet knows, Watcher knows, Traveler knows.

But you and you and you do not know.

Didn’t we learn something from The Moody Blues, 

In Search of the Lost Chord?

Cat Stevens’ Tea For the Tillerman?

Simon and Garfunkle’s Bridge Over Troubled Water?

Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow?

Gabrieli, Beethoven, Hindemith, and Nielsen?

Doing what were you those youthful years all?

Laugh if you must, but so essential those times were.

Forget did you fundamental humility and 

rules for honor and dignity there are?

On Earth, live the time of your life;

the life of your time; life without fear.

You work. You play. You live truly.

Condemn evil, be kind and gentle.

Speak of goodness, do charity.

Become fire. Become that lover, red hot.

From: Addendum

A work in progress

Buckle Up

Pay attention! Wilderness is speaking. Listen.

It is I. It is her. It is you. It is us.

It is no one else but the memory of many

who ran naked in the borderlands that belonged

to the wind, rabbits, coyotes, and the gathered in;

to lightning and thunder and rain; 

to green and yellow grasses, and blue sky clouds;

where The Traveler has Journeyed since time began.

What will the next thing be?

Creation isn’t finished.

It’s always in a state of becoming.

Welp, now it’s time to do something different.

Coyote said that Love will be our upper hand,

our flying hands, our open hands, our tender hands.

He has loosed a Ring of Fire. Time to fall in.

There will be more than one kind of Awakening;

more than one kind of Revelation;

more than just the noise of the Sacred Assemblies,

but only a one of a kind Traveler.

Buckle up, everyone.

It’s going to be another bumpy ride.

From:  A Rambly Search for Innocence, Time, and Love

Unpublished MS