I went to sleep last night counting coyotes...

At 3 a.m. I awoke to find Coyote standing on my chest smiling down at me

His panting breath, Rasping

a sand storm of shifting dunes

A-crossed a desert
of Change
 
A dust-devil twirling within the confines of an hourglass…

I could see my dark reflection drifting in the raven wing of his onyx eyes.

I went into the kitchen thirsty-
In the dim light I drank
As if I had spent the night

Howling

On plateaus.

I took the glass into my room and threw up the sash
I swallowed
The moon
Bathed me
In bed
I turned-
A fevered soul
In wordless sheets.

The next day In class we had a lesson-

On counting coyotes.

All problems were
Absent of anything constant

But, they were full of identical variables.

I was called to the frontline to formulate a solution
On the Cartesian plane of Descartes dreams and desert mesas.

Peripherally distracted
My concentration scattered
By philosophical dust devils
For, there, Bespectacled among my classmates was

Coyote!

He bared his teeth wryly at me.

Then again at noon,
As I sat in the inert vehicle
of my Meditative Expression,

I looked out the Windows,

And bless my Soul there, in the campus trees
Standing off in the distance was

Coyote

Smiling mischievously.

Avoiding my most human nature I turned away.
I cracked open my book and within the Con of the text

Coyote

assaulted me again.

I flipped the cover closed and Turned On the stereo
All it would play was

Howling.

Hungry,
I sailed into the drive through, and as I pulled up to pay-
There smiling in a white paper hat was

Coyote.

He reached out and handed me my Just Dessert,
Along with my

Change.
 
At the bank, he was just in front of me in line.
Trying to avoid him,
I Walked to the Machine,
The Teller took forever Counting out

Coyote's
Change.

At the movies the usher let him in through the back door
He sat behind me and I could feel his breath panting on the back of my neck.

At home I Turned On The nightly news and there before the weather map stood,

Coyote

pointing like a hunting hound to the barometer.
I noted the high pressure.
The forecast called for a

Change

In the weather.

My mind danced like a dust-devil,
My thoughts spinning
-a whirling wind in vane .

I clicked off
Rode my cycle to the nearest watering hole and ordered a shot of Whiskey.
But, when the bartender turned to reach for the bottle,
In the bar-back mirror, I could see that he was

Coyote

Smiling at me.
The jukebox was

Howling.

I abandoned the Lucky Dog Tavern,

Crossed

Against
The slick rain swept, obsidian street
-there in the Walk was a blind woman with her seeing-eye

Coyote.

Coyote was leading the woman into the traffic
With her raised cane-

KABOOM!

She took out the headlight of a taxi.

CRASH!

the blind woman's cane-

BLAM!

Electric
smashed
The oncoming

Dodge.

The cane cracked the asphalt.
The blind woman's shades reflected
The blue neon

Sign

of the-

I Crossed
myself

Lucky Dog.

SMASH!

The cane sliced though the air
Above the blind woman's head.

It took out the streetlight above me.

I was showered in pieces
Drifting fragments of filament.
As Coyote dragged the blind woman away

Raised
Cane
waving Chaotically

I

Crossed

The Road
-my Cycle
to the other side of the Intersection
listening to the ozone hiss.

In the distance a Siren-

Howling.

I looked up to see
A shooting Star
Crossed
The sky
disssss….solved!

the Profound expression-

The sum of all coyotes
Is the difference
between
A streetlight
and the Moon.