A Hunter’s Eulogy for Coyote

— given to the woods

Idone Rhodes

art by Cleo Maloney

Arguably, this is Coyote’s place— he wouldn’t admit it even if you asked. He’s got no deed dotted with age and spilled tea. His house is rotten logs bound together with mud-full mortar, lumpish, dusty, loved furniture.

I ran into Coyote once, when the hunting party lost hours, dogs lost in looming trees, lost in fog that coated our lashes. These sticky lashes, these marvelous curtains, opened to the clearing, more open sky than open ground.

Coyote seemed to be waiting. Not a man of so much speaking, his hand— sinewy, tired, coping— extended to my side, my hand becoming a child’s, soft and unworked, in his, rough.

He invited us, the hunting dog and me, into the parlor. The old dog, streaked with grey like Coyote, cracked stale tea cookie against his molars. Crumbs littered a fray-edged rug while Coyote brewed peppermint tea.

The old dog knew when Coyote was gone— rotten logs fell to dust, furniture unloved, tea moldy, unfinished in the parlor.

As if lost on purpose, the dog, greyer, greyer, greyer, returned to watch guard as the house became home to beetle and bug. And still, he lay there in grieving until a goodbye to both built a sooty altar of bones where Coyote’s place once was.