Coywolf

Some creatures hate you seeing them.They lean into a wind awaywith faces full of spleen.When the coywolf came to me, her eyes

said, I have not come to you at all,and then a second thing, somebeautifully put imperative—I have forgotten it—to forget

coywolf, which I have notcompletely. It was a summer eveningwhen the coywolf came to me;sphinx moths snorted lavender juice

in landscaped prairie weeds along the lake,the great lake that glows like dawnas it goes dark. I stoodby a maritime pitch pine, the needles

I like to touch. Like one memory you keep,and no others, of a lover who saidCome here my flower and pulledyou onto him—like touching a memory

like that, that's how to hold its needles.The lake lapped at the shoreline,one wave regurgitated itselfinto the cavernous riprap

and I turned to the dull bell of sound,to where the coywolf sat:poised like a dog told to sit,nearly chameleonic with her concrete-gray

fur, her stillness of a buildingagainst breakwater stones.Have you ever eyed your enemyand thought, No Never Not if we were the last

two people on the planet—the coywolf comesfrom getting over that.Come here my flower. When the coywolf cameto me I could not stop looking

in her eyes, as she let me, if I kept consentingto be forgotten, as I did.Their mission has no mission, no hidden hybridagenda, except to live. So coywolf learns

the lapdogs' schedules, the last peeof the night. Coywolf knowshow many bones wait in the rack of ribsyou brought to the barbeque, can tell

by your baby's inhalationsif she's about to laugh or cry.Coywolf sees you with your frozen fishand all you have to do is thaw it, in water

that falls right out of your faucet.Coywolf knows you have an errandand you think it will be quick,no need to latch the back screen door.

When I found the coywolf come to meand she said, you have found nothingand never will, it was dusk;as I stood searching like a human

the night bloomed into blacknessbeyond the sidewalk lamps—I saw it. And I left.I think about the coywolf as indistinctly

as I can: asleep on her bed of reddened needles,or dangling from her maw a squirrellimp as a long-traveled letterthat promises good news, but not for us.