Sue Priest Art

The Call

words copyright Sue Priest 

The call of a coyote lingers on the air.  I stand unmoving; my very presence is a

disturbance to the newly forming day.  Inhale, exhale, tendrils of my breath swirl around

me like a fog clouding my viewpoint.  Stillness seems to surround me, sounds of the

encrusted ice snapping and cracking as the river moves beneath it. The quiet solitude

 around me is misleading, I think of it as stillness, but it’s not.  The very earth beneath

my feet is always in motion.

            I turn away the sound of cars on the highway intrude upon the silence, the stench

of incinerated waste wafts on the breeze.  The light of a new dawn is streaking across

the horizon.  Another day begins.  Somehow I must fit myself into the structures that no

longer seem important to me. The memory of a heartbeat not my own, roots strong and

 deep grow in my spirit.  I struggle with words as I write this.  The language itself seems

so far removed from what’s natural from the very essence of my being.  With the tendrils

of my breath I grasp out for the words that aren’t really there.