Everybody’s talking about coyotes in the park,
and it makes me smile at their patience —
two hundred years, more or less, I guess,
laying low before they move back into a place
they occupied until a wave of settlers unsettled it
for a while.
                     Somebody says something
about their dog picking up organ, and I imagine
a fine specimen of some trendy breed at the keyboard
playing something tasteful like Palestrina
until it dawns on me that I missed an
an and lost sight of the dog picking up
something a coyote left behind — a heart,
I guess, or some such thing. Not likely.
But I suppose they might be
wary of the constant chatter and
drop something a dog would find too good to let lie.

The same bunch has been noticing a hum,
and I wonder if a band of coyotes has
taken up transcendental meditation.

But I suspect it’s some kind of machine
sans ghost and wait for the harmony of coyotes
howling at the moon backed by the drone

of a climate control system somewhere in east Hyde Park
straining against whatever the latest storm has blown in over the lake.
A band of jackals lurking among limestone boulders on the beach
at night make this city in a garden feel like home,

and I anticipate their lullaby.
Om mani padme hum.