Your Dog Playing with a Coyote

—a notion not out of place
where bears hunch under apple
trees at night like rocking chairs
with volition. She’s lonely, your dog,
and the young coyote waits for her at the edge
of the forest. Not sinister that tongue

laughing wildness when she
dashes forward to feign attack, then glances
away. If your dog chases too far,
what then? Joining wilder kin to rove
at borders suddenly treacherous? What does
dusk have to do with their marauding?

Some ancient tincture of permission
allows the edge of night
to blend where wild and tame
exchange fur in one naked, human
mind—my thinking toward them
to grant wilderness its emissary.
Coyote, whose very appearance takes

whisper to its highest pitch—then breaks
the play-form of invitation to withdraw,
shedding with a guiltless, backward
look, this unbidden fringe-work—to rejoin
her serial moons, her black on black
of night, our freshened
immensity.