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Another visit to my favourite fence. Its ugliness is perhaps what stops the wildlife within from being seen and hence disturbed more often. But the animal I saw today was in no way disturbed by my presence.
It was only when I saw the solitary coyote standing there looking off into the distance that the landscape resolved itself. A winding creek in a sparsely vegetated and generally barren land. It looked beautiful and full of the quiet promise of nature's subtle work.
But there was something about it that made no sense. The winding creek was running thick with dark waters of crimson but the coyote was standing on what looked like a rocky platform of the same hue. Or was this platform actually a pool wetting the coyote's paws? And why was the animal (still gazing off to the right) reflected in the pale sandy dust below it that made it look like a pool of differently coloured water? Perhaps I had misread this land. A lingering cover of reflective ice at winter's end perhaps. And what of those blue patches, merged into the land and surely too low for sky? They have to be water, don't they?
In truth, I know I am trying too hard to read it at a level beyond my comprehension. The coyote lives there that's all that matters (whilst resolutely ignoring me for whatever has its attention off to the right). It is not my world, I cannot live within those ridges of metal and failing layers of ancient paint. Rust can only sustain my inner self not my body so there is no point trying to place myself in its world by interpreting the life out of it. But I do quite enjoy tying my eyes in knots for the pointless fun of the tussle.
Meanwhile, the coyote still gazes at something I cannot see. And that kind of puts me in my place.
But blink and it's gone:
I found the coyote living in the fifth panel from the right but it's a sideways world where the coyote stares (...and stares) at the ground.
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