coyote

Strange times, here at the house of shoes.
One day, I’m minding my own business
up in the silent, green woods, and the next
I’m ‘herd boss’ for a building full of children
and their struggling-to-stay drug free moms.
Of course, life being the ever-unfolding
story within a story that it insists upon being,
a new job (where I’m over my head in lives
torn to pieces by multi-generational addiction),
is simply not enough. So, for fun, throw
my sister into the mix – her and her second
trip down vodka-plus-vicodin boulevard.

Overwhelmed barely begins to describe
the state I find myself in today.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m ecstatic about my job.
To feel capable and deserving of any work outside
my own little world is something I’ve longed for,
and something I’ve worked hard to achieve.
And knowing my own experiences might help
other women takes the ugliest of my past
and makes it meaningful and worthwhile.
Yet, witnessing and documenting the dysfunction
of addiction is a bit like looking in a mirror – I
often dislike much of what I see.
My sister’s downward spiral weighs heavily
on me, and I can’t help seeing the many similarities
between my own family’s story and those of all
the women currently under my care.
It’s like we all fell into the same dark sea,
and while some of us know how to swim –
none of us truly recognize the shore.

I saw a trickster this morning, down near the cemetery,
all sinew and instinct and those calculating eyes.
He rose out of some tall grass as if to cross the road,
but - thinking better of it, melted out of sight.
Was he the coyote of incessant demands,
a reminder of recklessness and impulse and greed?
Or was he bringing light, stolen from the stars,
an illumination in the darkness I keep trying to outrun?


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