WEBVTT

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The Boy and Coyote.

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For a friend, Ed Theis, met at
Veterans Administration hospital

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Fort Lyons, Colorado.

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Ed Theis did not--

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something had
happened in his life.

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He did not speak anymore.

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He didn't say a word.

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And I wondered why.

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You can see the rippled
sand riffs shallow inches

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below the surface.

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I walk on the alkaloid sand.

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Willows crowd the edges of sand
banks sloping to the Arkansas

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River.

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I get lonesome for the young
afternoons of a boy growing

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at akoma He listens
to the river,

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the slightest nuance of sound.

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Breaking thin ice
from a small still

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pool I find Coyote's footprints.

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Coyote he's always
somewhere before you.

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He knows you'll come along soon.

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I smiled at his tracks which
are not fresh except in memory

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and say a brief prayer
for good luck for him

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and for me and thanks.

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All of a sudden and
not far away there

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are the reports of a
shotgun muffled flat

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by salt cedar thickets.

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Everything hots for
several moments, no sound.

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Even the wind holds to itself.

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The animal in me crouches
poised immobile eyes

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trained on the distance
waiting for motion again.

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The sky is wide.

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Blue is depthless
and the animal and I

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wait for breaks in the horizon.

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Coyote's preference is
for silence broken only

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by the subtle wind, uncanny
bird sounds, soft cedar scraping

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and the desire to let
that man free listening

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for the motion of sound.

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