Made it at least twenty lengths out over
The canyon's edge with no one, except me,
The wiser. The joke was always on Wile E.
Coyote in the cartoons, and yes, it's me
Who'll have to do the falling, but in fact
It's the coyote who knows first he's defying
Gravity almost successfully, long before
The audience knows he's past hoping.
After a long loop through the nearby north,
The edges of the Arctic Watershed, edges
Of boreal forests, muskegs, First Nations
Communities who, despite the past
Few centuries, can still be kind to a stranger,
Can still forgive a hobbling coyote for being
What he never says he is, I found myself
Overlooking railroad tracks that ran along
The shore of the blue velvet lake. Who knew
A sesquicentennial ago that railroads would
Look romantically nostalgic, even backed up
With boxcars in lurid colors one day?
The highway I rode in on will be its own
Myth eventually, but for the time being, I was
Hanging over the ledge of all of this,
Pretending momentum prevented me
From noticing it was time I looked down.
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