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The Petty Player Who Rarely Sleeps

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And You Will Be Called Ashes As You Leave ( from a dream)

Certainly No Bread 3/16/2022

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THE FAN , AT NIGHT, GIVES GOOD ADVICE completely re-edited, an entirely different poem

What Is The Price For Your Touch? re-editied 5/31/2023

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Oh What Fine Physics (Before Me ,Lies) re-edtited @4/17/2023

If Prejudice Were Dumb And Could Not Speak

THE COMPANY THAT WE KEEP WITH THE ONE WITHIN

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Canis Latrans


************

(DIRECTLY WRITTEN TO PAGE, COME BACK FOR EDITS LATER)

cloudless
nights on the prairie
starless
nights in the hills
moonless
nights in the mountains

a voice that chills
Canis Latrans
eerie cadence runs through me
howls from the wild
pierces the brimming silence
that remains unbroken
til the voice repeats itself again and again
Canis Latrans

cunning and adaptable
sly genius
legend ingrained
Jokester and Trickster
lopsided, toothsome grin
mostly man is his bane

wise for survival
wise for the game
outwitting for five million years
his tale is not much changed
except for man
the ultimate predator

from Alaska to New York's
Central Park
Canis Latrans
leaves his distinctive mark
and now he even mates
with the wolf of the East
to create
a new species
he's become the Coy-wolf
to ensure his kin
and five million year legacy
can survive

how cunning
its not so surprising
how amazingly adaptive
I smile when I think
how he has inadvertently
re-invented
himself




LEGAL COPYRIGHT FOR THIS POEM 12:17pm PST TIME/DATE STAMPED
AND ALSO FOR THIS WRITER MELISSA A HOWELLS AND ALSO FOR THIS
LEGALLY COPYRIGHTED SITE TITLE MELOO STRAIGHT FROM HER TILT-A-W0RLD


In a previous poem, "Crowded Out", how a coyote jumped on a Max Train
near the Portland Oregon airport and rode it for two stops and a reporter
managed to get a picture of him looking at the camera seated in a passenger seat.
This was in 2001, when I moved here, just before 911. Imagine my surprise when I
found this detail which I found so significant and amazing back then, as a detail in
a book called Coyote America by Dan Flores in the Epilogue section near the back.
The picture was in the printed in the Portland newspaper and I sent the clipping back
home to a friend in Minneapolis to let her know about what sort of a place I had
moved to. The other day when we were coming home from Sweet Tomatoes restaurant,
a mother Coyote crossed the road. Her kits were on the other side.  Coyotes are everywhere
and yet, we think of them as a giant pest. They are indigenous. We are the invaders.
We haven't given them the option of going anywhere else...hence, being crowded out...
or adapting are their two choices.  More and more I see dead coyotes by the side of
the highway. It makes me very sad. We are losing our wildness and too much wilderness.





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