In the Forest Heard

Almost two miles into our walk near Goose Lake, where the path winds around an open field, we saw two coyotes trotting along on the bare ground, their reddish-brown coats gleaming with health in the morning sun. Headed in the direction we were, they paused and looked our way. Then we all rounded the bend, and they set off without urgency on another course, as if they might have been working off the effects of their breakfast and were not quite ready to start thinking about lunch.

When we reached it a few minutes later, the lake, utterly still, seemed to have grown a living skin, drawn tight and reflective to the edge. A sip of that water would turn a body inside out. A dip would cure or kill, or both. It is a wicked guacamole, made of avocados that fell far, far from the tree, laced with a lime of slime.

A Steller’s jay. A towhee, not five feet away. Thrushes and robins. A hawk. Five ducks, startled from the Mission waters by the old cottonwood tree. Wild daisies, all of them facing the sun. The thought that the sun followed them, rather than the other way around.

February 21, 2017

In the Forest Heard

Dear one, is it not a narrow view of solitude,
that here among us, you think yourself alone?

Recently Banned Literature, February 21, 2017

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