Coyote Star
I am walking on a cosmic beach
Out at the horizon, the graffiti spray of stars arcs into the Ocean
That is the only way I can see where the surface of the ocean is,
this black night gloss, this lacquer
Otherwise, I only tell it by sound, by scent, by wetness of sand
Somewhere out on that smooth obsidian
The ships are cutting their journeys
Sailing ships and star ships, ships bearing stars
Ships scattering stars across the field, like seeds,
Like crumbs in the forest
A trail to find one’s way back with
A trail to find one’s way forth with
Forthwith
Without delay
Communication is instantaneous
Yet communication is not always clear
I settle my haunches on my heels, tilt my head back, point my eyes up
The ships are alive, they are living, yet they cloak themselves,
chameleon-like in the star field
Bioluminescent in this great ocean reef of night
Muffling intelligences, scrambling themselves
Where a moment of honesty amounts to a self-betrayal
We are all out here, pilots and captains, tricking each other
Sirius
The brightest navigation star
Some autochthones call it Coyote Star
It beats where a dog’s heart would beat,
Propeller of song, the song dog,
The howls that connect us in the night
The shipping lanes of traffic and meaning,
The navigation maps of intention
Why would you use a trickster star to navigate by?
Unless part of communication is to not be understood straightforward
That the pleasure of communication is to lead people on
With sleight-of-hand, sleight-of-word,
But you shouldn’t feel slighted
For we do not only communicate to deliver information
But to express ourselves
And then it becomes art
In the way we say things, in what we reveal, and in what we time-release
It is a dance of veils, this legerdemain
And I watch the star veils dropping, undulating,
The ships passing through them
Signaling each other or withholding signal
This is the path they make in the akash
This is the path they mark of intention and release
And above me and including me is the firmament
That once people perceived as a dome
But that exploded, as perceptions explode
As stories give way to allow new stories
And now there is only the limitless field,
Abolishing dimensions,
And I the one perched on an agate dome
On this beach of stars reflecting in soaked, volcanic sand.
Many bridges connect the two halves of a city
And stitch over the rivers between us
Wormholes to bridge the dimensions
To bring our inner world to the outer
Here, let me show it to you.
When I look behind me, I see paw tracks instead of footprints.
Image from FinnAir/I Wish I Was in Finland
