It’s always there isn’t it…this darkness? You can stave it off with trips to the thrift store or obsessive tarot readings or your kid’s laughter or a sunny day or visiting the river or a walk in the woods and you’re happy, you really are then holy shit, here comes the darkness.
The Coyote Den
I went to the woods to find peace
To head off the melancholy tap tapping at my windowsill
I should have known by the turn of the branches,
The scrape of the muscadine vine across my neck
What was waiting for me there.
But I was mesmerized by the shining silver trunks,
By the patchwork loam sewn together with greenbriar vines,
dotted with sweetgum balls.
I should have heard the train roar sound of darkness
Rushing towards me, like black smoke from an autumn trash burn,
But instead I knelt down to look more closely at an old coyote den
Four smaller tunnels leading in four directions,
all contained inside one larger dip in the earth.
I should have prepared for what was coming
For the sudden push and rumble as the darkness caught me in a tailspin
My heart, which had shone so brightly and in so many directions
Was filled with the night and I tumbled down into the den.
Into the Dark.
