Creation Myth
Dec 30 2014


Coyote

the clever trickster,
lecher, prankster, wit.

It's foxes, here.

In my high-beams, on back roads, darting swiftly.
Where he stops
like a fugitive caught in the search-light,
unblinking eyes
reflecting coolly.
A penetrating stare
unnervingly self-possessed.

He seems too small
in this awful cold,
sharp-jawed

thin-boned.
I only see him alone;
a solitary hunter
who must be heart-quick

nimble

alert.

But he makes me unsure
of my standing
as master of the world.
As if indulging my presence
in his unquestioned domain
because I amuse him
or am useful
or might be food

some lean and hungry day.

Only the ravens
perched high overhead
get the better of fox,
taunting with their chortled caws
swooping down
like gleeful buzz-bombs.
A duel, to the death
of the mischief-makers
of mother earth.

For every creator, a destroyer.
Raven, who I'm sure will rule the forest
long after we're gone.
When both man and fox
have been banned from the garden
for life.

I was reading a short piece in the recent New Yorker that had numerous references to native creation myths. Coyote, by Rebecca Solnit, was one of several essays in the Dec 22/29 2014 edition on the general theme of “Inner Worlds”. Hers, in particular, contrasted an orthodox and rigid Christian view of the world with this more flexible and forgiving one. As she writes so beautifully in the opening paragraph:

“You can take the woman out of the Church but not the Church out of the woman. Or so I used to think, as my mother, a lapsed Catholic, carried out dramas of temptation, sin, and redemption by means of ice cream and broccoli. She had left behind the rites and the celebrations but not the anxiety that all mistakes were unforgivable. So many of us believe in perfection, which ruins everything else, because the perfect is not only the enemy of the good; it’s also the enemy of the realistic, the possible, and the fun.”

And concludes in the closing one:

“They’re not my property, these old stories, but they’re an invitation to reconsider what is. If the perfect is the enemy of the good, maybe imperfection is its friend.”

Coyote is always a star character in these native legends. As Solnit goes on to say:

“My mother’s punitive God was the enemy of Coyote. Prankish, lecherous, accident-prone Coyote and his cousins, the unpredictable creators of the world in Native American stories, brought me a vision of this realm as never perfect, made through collaboration and squabbling.”

Coyote as trickster is irresistible. We don't have them here (at least none I've seen); but what more natural substitute for coyote's niche than his canine cousin the fox -- both biological and mythological. I've also seen them in unusual numbers, lately; so when coyote came up, an image of these foxes, fleetingly glimpsed at night, immediately came to mind. (Perhaps there's been a population explosion of rodents this year. Or perhaps the wolves are distracted, and ceding territory.) Every time I see a fox, I have strong feelings of admiration and wonder. Their similarity to our beloved dogs, of course, makes them highly charismatic. And they seem such unlikely survivors -- let alone apex hunters -- in this harsh environment. So I wonder why I haven't long ago written something to do with these appealing creatures. And what better entry point than creation myth and trickster: my little riff on foxes structured as a tall tale.

I long ago wrote a poem about ravens, describing them as my totemic animal. One can't help but admire their intelligence and resourcefulness, their sense of play. Not to mention envy their power of flight. Somehow, raven insinuated himself in to this one. Perhaps it didn't seem fair to celebrate the fox and ignore his clever counterpart.

And then, of course, there's man. I think the role we play in this poem is one we often play in my work: as presumptuous and undeserving interloper on the natural world. So in my short parable of birth and death, I end up letting raven inherit the world. While we squander our birthright -- just as in Solnit's take on Genesis' unforgiving perfectionism, in which we're forever excluded from the garden for a single unredeemable sin. And while the fox, endearing but tragically flawed -- like the flawed creatures of native myth, which Solnit so admires -- inevitably fails. In the end, Man and fox are conflated: small unlikely creatures, too smart for their own good.