The heavy old man in his bed at night
Hears the Coyote singing
                          in the back meadow.
All the years he ranched and mined and logged.
A Catholic.
A native Californian.
       and the Coyotes howl in his
Eightieth year.
He will call the government
Trapper
Who uses iron leg-straps on Coyotes,
Tomorrow.
My son will lose this
Music they have just started
To love.

The ex acid-heads from the cities
Converted to Guru or Swami,
Do penance with shiny
Dopey eyes, and quit eating meat.
In the forests of North America,
The land of Coyote and Eagle,
They dream of India, of
        forever blissful sexless highs.
And sleep in oil-heated
Geodesic domes, that
Were stuck like warts
In the woods.
And the Coyote singing
        is shut away
        for they fear
        the call
        of the wild.

And they sold their virgin cedar trees,
        the tallest trees in miles,
To a logger,
Who told them,

‘Trees are full of bugs.”

The Government finally decided
To wage the war           all-out. Defeat
       is Un-American. 
And they took to the air,
Their women beside them
        in bouffant hairdos
        putting nail-polish on the
        gunship cannon-buttons.
And they never came down
        for they found,
        the ground
is Pro-Communist. And dirty.
And the insects side with the Viet Cong.

So they bomb and they bomb
Day after day, across the planet
        blinding sparrows
        breaking the ear-drums of owls
        splintering trunks of cherries
        twining and looping
        deer intestines
        in the shaken, dusty, rocks.
All these Americans up in special cities in the sky
Dumping poisons and explosives
Across Asia first,
And next North America,

A war against earth.
When it’s done there’ll be
         no place

A Coyote could hide.


                                         envoy

                                 I would like to say
                                 Coyote is forever
                                 Inside you.

                                 But it’s not true.