TELLING ABOUT COYOTE
-*.- Pueblo -*.-
Told by Simon Ortiz
Old Coyote .......
"If he hadn't looked back everything would have been okay
..........like he wasn't supposed to,
............but he did,
and as soon as he did, he lost all his power,
his strength."
". . . you know, Coyote is in the origin
and all the way through . . .
he's the cause of the trouble,
the hard times that things have . . ."
Yet, he came so close to having it easy.
But he said, "Things are just too easy . . ."
Of course he was mainly bragging, shooting his mouth.
The Existential Man,
Dostoevsky Coyote.
He was on his way to Zuni
to get married on that Saturday,
and on the way there he ran across a gambling party.
A number of other animals were there.
He sat in for a while, you know,
pretty sure of himself,you know like he is,
sure that he would win something.
But he lost everything.
Everything.
And that included his skin,
his fur which was the subject of envy
of all the other animals around.
"Coyote had the prettiest, the glossiest,
the softest fur that ever was."
And he lost that.
So some mice finding him shivering in the cold
beside a rock felt sorry for him.
"This poor thing, beloved" they said,
and they got together just some old scraps of fur
and glued them on Coyote with pinon pitch.
"And he's had that motley fur ever since.
You know,the one that looks like scraps
of an old coat,that one."
Coyote, old man, wanderer, where you going, man?
Look up and see the sun.
Scorned, an old raggy blanket at the back
of the closet nobody wants.
At this one conference of all the animals
there was a bird with the purest white feathers.
His feathers were like,
ah . . .
like the sun was shining on it all the time
but you could look at it
and you wouldn't be hurt by the glare.
It was easy and gentle to look at.
And he was Crow.
He was sitting at one side of the fire.
And the fire was being fed large pine logs,
and Crow was sitting downwind from the fire,
and the wind was blowing that way..........
And Coyote was there. He was envious of Crow because
all the other animals were saying,
'Wowee, look at that Crow, man, just look at him:
admiring Crow.
Coyote began to scheme.
He kept on throwing pine logs into the fire,
ones with lots of pitch in them.
And the wind kept blowing, all night long............
Let's see, the conference was about deciding the seasons-
when they should take place
and it took a looong time to decide that........
And when it was over,
Crow was covered entirely with soot.
The blackest soot from the pine logs.
And he's been like that since then."
"Oh yes, that was the conference when Winter
was decided that it should take place when Dog's hair got long.
Dog said, 'I think Winter should take place when my hair gets long.' And it was agreed that it would.
I guess no one else offered a better reason."
Who?
Coyote?
0, 0 yes, last time......
when was it,
I saw him somewhere between Muskogee and Tulsa,
heading for Tulsy Town I guess,
just trucking along.
He was heading into some oakbrush thicket,
just over the hill was a creek.
Probably get to Tulsa in a couple days,
drink a little wine,
tease with the Pawnee babes,
sleep beside the Arkansas River,
listen to the river move,
....... hope it don't rain,
hope the river don't rise.
He'll be back. Don't worry.
He'll be back.
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