It’s been a winter of coyotes here on our little hill. The neighborhood listserv has been flooded with sightings. A lone coyote, clearly a nursing mother, trots up and down the street in broad daylight. At dusk we hear a pack yipping and howling, an eerie din rising from the brush near six-lane Riverside Drive. These urban coyotes are nothing new—here and elsewhere—but they still come as a shock. And a reminder that wildness is never that far away.
I discovered this poem through the lovely Chris at Firefly Creative Writing, whose newsletters always offer wisdom and balm alongside their (fabulous!) class offerings. I’d love this poem even if I didn’t have coyotes roaming my street. But because I do, I knew my neighbors would love it too.
“and passengers looked up from their thermoses
swallowing surprise as if
all the world was holding their breath”
