Coyotes on the Hill

                The fire has gone out of the autumn. The brightest of the leaves now a faded yellow. Not sad, but tired, worn. Leaves tremble, longing for release, for the far off ground that is their destiny. The cycle this represents. Time, told the old way, seasons, begins from endings, coiled and serpentine, eternal in this. The images there, poetic. Profound. Not this cold linear view of the world that modernity has adopted. The straight lines of progress costing us the wisdom of far off yesteryears. Circles within circles, beginnings begetting endings, ending beginnings, the serpent eating its own tail. The twisted path of genius.

                The smell of leaf rot is thick. Not unpleasant, affirming. Brown, curled leaves to crunch under foot, rustling about in a swirl of movement. Khayyam, strength of heart, weak of leg, trots (too strong this word, with his limps and aches) into foliage well into senescence. Gaia’s slumber begun, first notes of winter’s deep, sonorous toll. The knowledge of this not a wound, not a fear for the days of long dark, nor the ache of the cold.

                A lone toad sluggishly moves away from the slag of the rail bed on which Khayyam walks. The tracks (straight lines of progress, gone now; a message in that) nothing but a memory, allow the mottled fellow an escape, a last clutching gasp of warmth. He burrows into leafy cover in the thick of some sumac. Not that Khayyam has a taste for toads, but he doesn’t know that about this dog.

                We walk far. Explore this new path. Forgotten rail bed, wooded glades, long stretches of field, crops taken in, harvest come and gone. The houses are distant, spaced far. A distant dog senses us on the tracks and sets to barking. Khayyam perks at this, but does not deign to reply. He has slowed, hips bothering him in the damp. No sun to warm us, though the day is not cold. Grey though, damp. He limps, so we turn.

                At the road crossing a white Pontiac has stopped, pulled up alongside our path. “There are coyotes in the field,” she says. Blonde, pretty, she is concerned. Turning, I see them. On a hill, looking our way. Several of them. Odd, seeing this in daylight. Odd, seeing them in a pack, not a lone trickster. They are far, on their hill. Khayyam, big, golden eyed, has not noticed them. The hill is distant. Not a concern. She is worried, asks “will you be okay?” A smile, a nod. Not far to go now, even for old hips on damp, flat lit days.

                A wave, a road crossing, the rail bed again. Line of progress away from the hill, through trees set to sleep in the dancing of seasons. A trickster yips once. A look back, all are gone. Silence then, the leaf falling deafeningly, to rot and give of itself.