Coyote

by Charles de Lint

1.

Coyote's

all used up now,

some say.

His mystery has

been diminished

by too much attention:

a hundred times a hundred

times a hundred times over

he's sold as a memory

to tourists—

snout pointing moonward,

howl in throat;

his image has become

quick shorthand

to the apperception

of Trickster as myth

and every would-be shaman,

born of book

or new age guru,

is on a first name basis with him.

Though, of course,

Coyote only ever had

the one given name.

The commercialization

is robbing Coyote

of his Trickster myth,

those same worriers go on.

It's not a recent phenomena;

he's already been swallowed by cartoons.

He's Bugs Bunny and Tweety Bird,

and even the Roadrunner

(where Wiley plays the fool

—but that's Trickster, too).

Now he's Bart Simpson,

they say,

Trickster for the nineties,

and the real magic's

all gone away.

2.

Here's Coyote

as we met him:

A raucous sound

cutting across the night's

comforting cricket chorus—

it's freshman week

at Desert U.

as a half-dozen coyote voices

mimic drunken students;

party animal, indeed.

MaryAnn calling me

to an early-morning window,

pointing, "There,"

as two reddish grey and buff shapes,

white-bellied and cock-eared,

continue on down the road,

disappearing finally

behind a stand of mesquite

and beavertail cacti:

calm ghosts,

not so much shy,

as cautious.

Terri and I driving

to Tappan and Beth's,

stopped a half-dozen yards

from the driveway

as two coyotes come

down the dry wash,

stand to watch us

as we watch them,

—curiosity on their part,

awe on ours—

then slip away into the brush.

Standing on the small hill

that holds a replica

of the Grotto of Lourdes

just east of the San Xavier Mission,

I point down the hill at a dog,

and joke, "There's a coyote,"

but it's no joke;

the lean shape ambles

in between the parked cars and buses,

and makes his brazen way

along the wall enclosing

the San Xavier Plaza,

set across the parking lot

from the Mission.

He's in sight a moment longer,

then he crosses the road

and saunters away,

into the scrub.

On the stones of a dry riverbed

at the bottom of an arroyo,

sitting with MaryAnn and Terri,

the slopes rising up on either side,

red stone and green cacti,

a secret place,

my gaze was caught

by a broken branch-stump

on the lower trunk

of a desert willow,

and there was Coyote,

rising from the wood,

head lifting out of the bark

nose pointed high,

ears cocked—

features pulled from the tree

by wind and stormy weather.

Driving back to Terri's

with Charles and Karen

in the backseat,

MaryAnn saying to them,

"I hope you'll get to see

a coyote before you go,"

and no sooner do the words leave her mouth,

than there he is,

a lean grey and brown form

caught in the headlights,

the reflection from

the tapetum layers behind his retinas

turning his gaze bright red.

3.

Coyote will survive

commercialism

and new ageism

and tourism

and any other -isms

we care to throw his way.

He'll adapt to our intrusions,

into both myth and nature,

because he is Coyote.

It isn't mysticism

that sustains him,

but mystery.

4.

We brought home

Coyote in a photograph:

desert brush and cacti,

sun-bleached stone and faded dirt,

and somewhere in the picture,

hidden—

spot the coyote.

We brought home

Coyote on a T-shirt,

Bryer's coyote woman playing a flute

while all around her,

the coyotes are singing.

We brought home

Coyote as a Zuni fetish,

jet, inlaid with turquoise,

myth wise.

We brought home

Coyote in a pencil sketch

and another I did

with a ball point pen.

We brought home

Coyote and his mate,

in Terri's "Coyotes Mate for Life,"

brownprint and pastels,

an image that perfectly

steps the intuitive path

between coyote spirit

and human spirit.

The point is,

what we brought home

was the idea of Coyote,

the resonance of his presence

as it plays against my spirit,

but Coyote remains

as he always has been:

mythic spirit and desert predator,

cockily brazen and ghost shy,

Trickster and Canis latrans,

capable of adapting to

any environment or lifestyle,

and forever unconcerned

with how we perceive him.

5.

Coyote's

all used up now,

some will still insist.

Such a sentiment says more about

the one who holds it to be true

than it ever could about

Coyote.

Charles de Lint
Late autumn, 1991