• HIGH DESERT DREAM

    The mountains rise, bluer blacker than real against a faded sky. The ancestors have fled these hills, no orange eyes stare out of the night, no voices of the trickster take up chorus against the stars.


  • THE TRICKSTER RESPONDS

    The man liked to cry out into the night, asking questions for which he knew there could be no answers, or if there were, they would be things he would never wish to hear. The coyotes in the hills would listen to his pleas, his entreaties, his moaning, and they would remember the spirits of…


  • TRICKSTER

    He imagines what it might be like to come down out of the foothills and roam the mesa, unseen unless he wishes, a complete freedom. And even if he chooses to be seen, he can take whatever shape he wishes, and they would see him only as he chose, for only as long as he…


  • ÁŁTSÉ HASHKÉ (THE TRICKSTER)

    The wind takes up voice as it caresses these mountains, it’s song a lullaby to the coyotes staring at the waning moon. When night grows darkest, they join in the song, a spirit kirtan they have practiced for centuries. Men stare nervously on the mesa at the stars providing faint light, the moon wrapping herself…


  • COYOTE SONG

    Down at the butt end of the arroyo is a pond, an aneurysm in the stream that runs down from the mountains for better than a month each spring. The twisted, gnarled mesquite cluster around it, like children gazing at a corpse in utter fascination who dare not approach lest it become real and touch…


  • TRICKSTER

    “Coyote is always out there waiting, and Coyote is always hungry.”  — Navajo Saying


  • And So It Begins

    The coyote no longer inhabits the hill south of our city. Yet we know he is there, staring down at the lake, watching the grape clusters fatten on the vines. We cannot see the orange-red orbs of his eyes on a still winter night. We know he sees us. Coyote cannot be found, no carcasses…