Tag Archives: death

The tricksters

They run like ghosts
the coyotes
twirling from head
and tail

turning with the swift fury
of the stirred dust devil

and just as quickly
stopping
on a small outcropping
with a sharp stillness

to gaze and make
contact, to let

you know they’ll be
gone in a flash,
just like you, leaving
their markings

in secret places
of the field.

—Stacey Warde

no need of boxes

let the soil touch my face
in a final sharing of stored light
for it is the dirt of this earth
that gave me birth
let it take me home again

i will sing with the worms
lift blades of grass
as fingers to the wind
raise saplings to catch the rain
i will speak from stones
beneath a broken moon

let me crawl into the earth
and she into me
we will make love, eternal
as the crickets sing

—Ruth Rice