How many died when the roots were blackened by fires,
unpredictable, like the minds that blend blue into green?
Yet new buds appeared, and ducks walk from one pond

to float on another. Emerging with footprints leading
to Ody Coyote, the trickster no theology can tolerate.

His father died. Then a decade later his mother died.
A few years later his sister died. Finally, he died too.