The story goes that the universe is run by two simple things,
a prime mover and a coyote.
This coyote is a wily dog born
from ancient trickster bones,
Loki, Hermes, the northwestern Raven of lore,
all glimmer in his aluminum eyes.
And while
the prime mover makes
the world simply by
dreaming of its own dreaming
spanning all, shaping all,
the coyote mostly sleeps,
his chin to the ground, one ear perked up,
his body resting in the shade of the prime mover’s infinity.
Coyote awakens at something like the smell of bacon
and trots across the kingdom of heaven
hopping down into the world,
sniffing for mischief.
And as the prime mover contemplates
the contemplation that therefore spawns existence,
and time passes without passing,
the coyote sprightly follows the dusty trail back home,
where he dances around the prime mover
eagerly barking and yipping and telling tales
of coincidence wrought, good luck won,
bad luck earned, loose ends that were somehow connected,
all thanks to this little mischief mutt:
the longed-for lover shows up at the bus stop,
the ex-roommate appears with the missing keys,
the thought of a distant friend sails across the mind
just as she strolls by the café window.
“Hey, what are you doing here?” a happy voice sings.
The winning lottos made of birthday numbers,
postcards sent to the dead letter office
that still somehow deliver meaning,
wrong number callers who somehow fall in love,
and the ragged luck of pulling an inside straight
on a last chip on a last bet on a last day.
Coyote wags his tail and brags:
of the taxicab pulling up at the first raindrop,
the wrong turn leading to a better place,
the guilty soul arrested for a different crime,
the critical ally sighted through the ancient hotel’s
revolving doors in some faraway destination.
“Hey, what are you doing here?” a voice happily sings.

All this vibrates and shimmers
around coyote as he makes his way
connecting the wonder moments,
for good or for ill
and coming home to tell his story,
wagging, grinning, barking.

But the prime mover simply
revolves on in silence
deaf to everything
moving like a whale
swimming through the
endless blue seas of
its own deep and infinite dream.