Poem - “Outside”
The least little sound sets the coyotes walking,
walking the edge of our comfortable earth.
We look inward, but all of them
are looking toward us as they walk the earth.
We need to let animals loose in our houses,
the wolf to escape with a pan in his teeth,
and streams of animals toward the horizon
racing with something silent in each mouth.
For all we have taken into our keeping
and polished with our hands belongs to a truth
greater than ours, in the animals’ keeping.
Coyotes are circling around our truth.
William Stafford, “Outside” from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 1960, 1998 by William Stafford and the Estate of William Stafford. Reprinted with permission of The Permissions Company, Inc. on behalf of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, MN, graywolfpress.org.