The Trickster Strikes

I don't know that I'm supposed to tell the world that my spirit guide -- in recent travels, anyway -- has been Coyote. If you know my poetry book (The Coyotes and My Mom) then you'll understand with what alarm, and wariness, and maybe even horror, I encountered her. (It was definitely a female coyote -- I don't know how that alters its trickster qualities. Not much, I would guess, but I can feel a difference in the energy.)

Anyway, yesterday I suffered a major setback in my writing gameplan. I reeled. Two students immediately showed up at my office door (my soccer girls, which kind of fits with this whole trickster theme) and I was so incoherent they must have wondered what was going on with me. But after a couple hours, after an evening with my friend Margaret listening to poet David Whyte (something of a trickster himself), I felt better. It could be a good thing, this huge shift in my gameplan. Don't I tell my students that when they find themselves within the unexpected, relish it?

Then, after dropping Margaret off at 10:30 p.m., I decided to drive home via Olympic View Drive, and there, standing in the middle of a bend as if waiting for me, was an exceedingly scruffy looking coyote. She stood stock still (why not a female?) and waited until my lights swept over her, then she trotted amicably away into the brush along the road.

It all adds up.

A long time ago I made two resolutions: 1) To let everything that happens draw me closer to God (this has been harder than I expected, but I keep trying), and 2) To use everything that happens as an excuse to write. Why not?