For my sister
They say coyotes are related to wolves in family and genus. We have few wolves in Iowa, but a coyote can be found at the abundance side of every corn row, and behind each stalled tractor. One stood in our driveway a few years back, stared us down as we drove in. Another jogged handily across a nearby winter field, as if it held the deed to the land under its paws, and maybe it did.
When I set a tent on our acres and lie down listening to the night close in, the yipping and howling reminds me of the primitive life we’ve long since abandoned, and the adventures we miss in our rush toward a generally unceremonious end. A need for control bruises our sense of wonder; we acquiesce to the tedious and tame. When, I ask myself, did I last divine the mystery of place? I string a line of tin cans around my countless parameters and hope to hear their gentle clangs amid life’s noise.
Coyotes rarely attack humans, but it happens, and not just in rural settings. In cities, in populated areas, with children and pets, and adults too, they rebel against encroaching society. They often roam in packs rurally, drag newborn lambs across the snowy plats, and chickens and turkeys from under our watchful springtime eyes, in a quest for anything to feed themselves and their pups, anything to survive.
I don’t hear them every night; sometimes the sky blares dark and grand instead, incessant soundlessness. The lull sets me on an Iowan Everest, pure nature spread before me. The owls hush, the scratching branches quell, and the brushing of the evergreens against each other, for a twinkling at least, stills.
When a clock sits idle, time does too. Left are simple breaths, one upon another, and an instant’s embrace. Palms up, we surrender it all at the first crease of light inching along the horizon, at a mourning dove’s tender cooing. The progression begins anew; there is movement, sway, and clamor.
If I’ve learned anything from being apart from you, Sister, like the winter coyotes seeking food, it’s a sense of urgency, and like an indigo night sky, it’s a blast of moments, poignant and fled.
~
Chila Woychik is originally from the beautiful land of Bavaria but has lived in the American Midwest most of her life. She is widely published, and has an essay collection, Singing the Land: A Rural Chronology (Shanti Arts, 2020). Her impressive barn is currently home to an old cat named Sweet Pea and four young strays, Shadow, Skitter, Suzy, and Scamp. Chila is the founding editor at Eastern Iowa Review, and also reads for Birdcoat Quarterly and The Upper New Review. www.chilawoychik.com