Veering down the track like a girl veering down a cobbled street
in the Meat-Packing District,
high heels from the night before, black shawl of black-tipped hair

Transcript: So this is a poem called The Coyote, or The Coyote, depending on where you are brought up, and it has do with a coyote I came across--saw--one evening in Vermont ,and my dog didn’t seem to notice the coyote and that's really at the core of this poem--trying to make sense of that moment. I mentioned the game of marbles, keepsies, the marbles weren't kept So...

The Coyote

Veering down the track like a girl veering down a cobbled street
in the meat-packing district,
high heels from the night before, black shawl of black-tipped hairs,

steering clear of that fluorescent ring
spray-painted on an even stretch of blacktop
like a ring in which we might once have played keepsies,

veering down the track without the slightest acknowledgement from Angus,
the dog lying in a heap on our porch
like a heap of clothes lying beside a bed,

Angus who had himself been found wandering by the highway
somewhere on the far side of Lake Champlain,
slubber-furred, slammerkin, backbone showing through,

and, though we didn't know it when we brought him home,
blind in one eye, the right one,
the one between him and the coyote,

Recorded on: 1/30/08