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A Brief History of My Life as a Coyote

I’m not cóyotl, the Aztec trickster,
the death decliner who succeeds
through failure and holds the way
open between the worlds.

I come from that original deceiver,
Prometheus the clever, who got caught.
He paid with pain and regeneration.
Disposing of the dead is a necessary

unpleasantness. Raven and I are free
to wheel about the earth and sky.
We create when we destroy.
We are the bringers of fire.

Listen to this poem here:

About This Poem:

• This poem was originally published here on this blog in March 2016, another poem written in a Stockton class, from a prompt given by Stephen Dunn. At the time I posted it, I was thinking about burnout in clinicians, about being between the worlds of medicine and poetry, and about being between the worlds of life and death as a Palliative Care doctor. As I reread that blog post, I see these themes repeated in the memoir that I’m writing.

• I recently listened to an online lecture by john a. powell. He was a guest lecturer in a webinar on healing trauma. He talked about how the polarization that’s all around us is based on othering. Trauma is experienced both by the one being othered and the one doing the othering. The antidote to othering is a sense of belonging and safety, feelings that go way beyond mere inclusion in a group.

• As I write this, it’s Election Day. I don’t know the outcomes yet, but I know that whatever they are, both sides will spin the results differently. My hopes for the future remain the same. I want my work to increase our sense of community and belonging. In 2016, I was trying to bridge the worlds of life and death. This year, I’m trying to transcend the polarity between us and them.