CANIDAE IS A SPECTRUM

The other morning there was a gray fox at my front door and a coyote at the back. I couldn’t decide what I wanted this to mean so I asked a friend who said “canidae is a spectrum”. This gave me something to gnaw on while I worried over winter coming and family going and I found I wasn’t good for much except chasing bunnies through the brush and tearing the meat off roasted bones. I tried praying for the first time in maybe ever. Well I didn’t try, I didn’t plan to, I just turned a corner and stumbled into the sun pinking the sea and sunk into prayer by the roses. They weren’t answered - weren’t even heard - and in hindsight they sound as banal as trying to take this photo of the sunset on the waves, thinking it’ll mean something. I snatched the petals off the rose and stuffed them in my breast pocket so the next day when I see this light blazing through the beeches and get hit with a whiff of the ocean I remember you can be in more than one place at once. I look up. I look down. I sit on a stump. A buck walks in, grunting softly. He’s glistening brown and so at home here in the shape shifting darkening woods with the coyotes singing the sundown all around us. I look out my bedroom window and see the full hunters moon reflected four times and there’s a dim yellow light shining from downstairs and blue from behind the trees and I can’t tell what’s inside and what’s out.