Coyote

Coyote, my friend, like you, I
have only a toy umbrella
to ward off God’s falling anvils,
like you I blow through gravity’s
guardrails and arrow unerringly
earthward into a bull’s eye keen
to accordion me again.

If I could tame my vanishing point
and paint a tunnel into a mountainside
with what passes for belief, would
anyone oblige me to enter it awake?

Oh, free
me, friend Coyote, from this New
Year’s irresolution, teach me
to fall like you, fail like you,
and, when I am done seeing stars,
to remember how much I thirst
for the desert, the chase, and even,
God help me,
the fall.

DUDLEY STONE

Dudley Stone’s poetry has recently appeared online in NiftyLit, Spare Parts, and Wilderness House Poetry Review. His writing for the theatre has been seen on stages from California to Connecticut. He has a B.A. in Theatre from the University of Kentucky and studied playwriting at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Mr. Stone lives in Lexington, Kentucky.