Crossing a City Highway

The city at 3 a.m. is an ungodly mask

the approaching day hides behind

& from, the coyote nosing forth,

the muscles of something ahead,

& a fiery blaze of eighteen-wheelers

zoom out of the curved night trees,

along the rim of absolute chance.

A question hangs in the oily air.

She knows he will follow her scent

left in the poisoned grass & buzz

of chainsaws, if he can unweave

a circle of traps around the subdivision.

For a breathy moment, she stops

on the world’s edge, & then quick as that

masters the stars & again slips the noose

& darts straight between sedans & SUVs.

Don’t try to hide from her kind of blues

or the dead nomads who walked trails

now paved by wanderlust, an epoch

somewhere between tamed & wild.

If it were Monday instead of Sunday

the outcome may be different,

but she’s now in Central Park

searching for a Seneca village

among painted stones & shrubs,

where she’s never been, & lucky

she hasn’t forgotten how to jig

& kill her way home.