COYOTE LOGIC
A coyote barks at the moon like it owes him money,
sharp and mean against the soft
cotton sheets of this desert night.
He doesn’t know there’s no moon tonight—
just a ghost of it,
hiding like me.
I’m wrapped up in this landscape,
and by wrapped, I mean tangled.
Mesquite thorns snag my jeans,
sand pours into my boots,
and somewhere, a cactus laughs in needles
The stars don’t help;
they’re too busy being eternal
to care about my flashlight battery.
So I follow the coyote’s nonsense song,
trusting his anger more than my map.
When he stops barking,
I stop too—
and there it is:
the smell of something green
in a world of dust.
Sabyasachi Roy
Sabyasachi Roy is an academic writer, poet, artist, and photographer. His poetry has appeared in The Broken Spine, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review, Dicey Brown, The Potomac, and more. He contributes craft essays to Authors Publish and has a cover image in Sanctuary Asia. His oil paintings have been published in The Hooghly Review. You can follow his writing on Matador here:
https://creators.matadornetwork.com/profile/e0x59k96/
https://www.instagram.com/pensoftworks/
https://sabyasachiroy.substack.com/