Community Post: “Coyote in Park!”
 

Tip-toing over the park, she pauses, her nose

to the earth for a scent of an ancestral path

far below. She’s heard whispers among the pack

of it, saying the path traces an ancient stream.

Her mind races to imagine it—a draw,

willows, trickling water, prey in tall grass.

The old stories line passages beneath

the park’s short-cropped sward, leveled

as habitat for mothers and strollers, baseball

and cricket, canine distant cousins on leashes.

Coyote sniffs the air for heaven’s aid,

her breath, a vapor in the chill autumn dawn.

She saunters forward. Inhabiting the sinew

of her limbs is the memory passed down

by past hunters—rabbits crying in a thicket,

spent salmon an easy catch in the shallows,

a deer taken down by the pack, so deft,

the carcass left half-eaten.

Pups in dens at mothers’ teats.

Grinding in her soul are newer stories

of woodsmen and axes chewing,

felling trees to be shaped into dens

for the two-legged hunters, logs dragged

by horses to the bay and out to other lands.

But all stories fade with each new litter.

A willowed creek drained and tilled,

its telling quelled in the interment.

Tales of the new hunters replace the old,

and Coyote has only dreams running cold

like still waters far beneath her feet.

Getting Along in a Crowded Field

Fifty to a hundred geese dot the park foraging on freshly watered, fertile grass. They visit sporadically, but we’ve seen a larger than usual and more regular contingent of them this year.

The park authorities say their population is increasing across the city—3,500 of them this year. Lots of park grass and a lack of natural predators.

Among the geese are kids playing soccer, parents watching on, and dog walkers. Park-goers have complained the geese are encroaching on human territory, impeding traffic, and pooping where we walk.

I speculate the presence of geese is goose-revenge. After all, we’re encroaching on their land, once teeming with waterways. “Our park” was once “their marsh” before it was drained and the geese pushed out, along with indigenous peoples, who had been getting along fine with the honkers. In spite of our takeover, Canadians have adopted the Canada goose as a symbol of our heritage, proudly boasting images of geese on tourist literature to welcome in foreign dollars. Before we ask the tourists to leave again.

Our neighborhood geese keep trying to remind us we need to find ways to live together in a diverse environmental and social community, for the health and well-being of all.

This is tough because it requires some patience and creative thinking. We easily fall back on self-gratification rather than mutual care—abolishing critters, bush, and trees that are in our way. But I marvel how the geese are blending in with our human community. If they’ve managed to adapt, can we?

Across the park’s four or five acres, soccer players, dog walkers, and geese are creating space for each other and carrying on like happy campers. The geese have moseyed off, necks craned, heads turning left and right as if watching for traffic, toward one corner of the park near the mammoth willow tree, then pluck at the turf. The soccer goals have been moved slightly to give them room, and the numerous dogs are mostly on leash.

I unleash our pooch Bernie, half the size of a goose, just to see what might happen, but I may have just as well thrown a brick through a front window. Bernie shows no respect, taking off right into the flock. The geese fly up briefly, settle down again, while he runs in circles barking as the geese lift again to let him pass. They seem to be baiting him. I couldn’t help thinking they were enjoying this?

It takes some effort. Living in harmony in a diverse community is not easy.

But today I’m surprised how effortless it seems when all living things give a little here or there. I smile. I’m even thankful for the geese that pooped in the park because they taught Bernie not to eat it strange things, or else get sick.

I encourage disgruntled residents to be quiet a moment and take delight in the gorgeous array of shared life right around us. The words of Gerard Manley Hopkins, the finest of English poets, from his poem, “God’s Grandeur,” come fresh to mind . . .

 The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil.

                          .              .             .

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod.

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil

And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell.

                             .             .             .

And for all this, nature is never spent

              .             .             .            

because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.