We built this house
On a dirt road at the edge of the forest
And between two coyotes dens
So it’s hard to know if the howling at night
Is sibling rivalry or civil war
Serenade or sacrifice

The colonial maps and oral histories
Note nothing of the hawk shadows
That circle gopher families
Hiding in the shade and roots of pine trees
That have outlived pestilence and fire
And the technicolor cowboy movies
Of the early rings of their forgotten youth

Mule deer wander, agnostic
Across the yard and out my gate
To the mountain meadows above
Without a second glance
At the raccoons canvassing garbage cans
Like a liberation militia
Living off nothing but the knowledge
That our intrusion is at most
Transient or tourist
Easily exploited; inevitably outlasted

These people don’t care about
My earnest endeavours
My myths and unreliable narration
Of some special place for me and mine
In this place of feral patterns and
Cyclical time, and so I don’t exist
To them at all,
I’m just an alien, an anomaly
Lost in space
An insider looking out at outsiders
Looking through, and
Seeing only refractions of shadows
Where I imagine I stand

I don’t lock my doors
Against the post modern vigilantes
Out here at night, when humanity ends
But I probably should
If only to remind myself
Of all the strange things that I am, and
All of the stranger things
That I am not