One View of Things
Poems by Mark Goad
From the Wayfarer archive, 2015
Coyote in the Backyard on Cape Cod
He lopes across
purposeful and nonchalant
like a young guy cruising the supermarket
for something that appeals, clearly a seasoned suburbanite,
easy with his surroundings though I have never seen him here before.
I suspect he’s forgotten to be invisible this time, provoked
by morning hunger and the need to get back home
to the wife and kids after a night on the prowl.
But he doesn’t care what I am thinking.
His yellow eyes barely notice me
as he trots past, toward the
neighbor’s yard where
the best rabbits live.
One View of Things
Cochineal sunset over blue damask sea,
stars not yet blinked open.
Every bird is silent.
The waves are set on delicate.
Something mighty is quietly happening.
There is always a first star of the evening
and always a second. Sometimes they appear
almost simultaneously and it is difficult to know
which was which. But one is always first,
followed by another.
What no one ever sees
is the last star’s appearing.
The odds of that are billions to one.
It would be like winning the stargazers’ lottery.
Unimaginable wealth!
The sun resents leaving. Drags things out
like a child who begs for just one more story.
But night finally overwhelms it. Then the waves
sing softly to the stars. A welcome.
A lullaby.
Mark Goad is a poet now living on Cape Cod, southeastern Massachusetts. Born in Ohio, he has lived and studied in Chicago, Geneva, Switzerland and Boston (with sojourns in Connecticut and rural Nebraska). He has completed undergraduate and graduate studies in English literature, German language, theology and philosophy. His work has been published in journals including Assisi, BAPQ, Epiphany, bluepepper, Decanto, Big River Literary Review, Extract(s), Crannóg, Ayris, Concho River Review, The Wayfarer, Contrary, Turbulence, Christian Century and is soon to appear in Spiritus and Poetry Salzburg Review.