HAIBUN OF COYOTE AND HUMMINGBIRD
Annie Tubman
Running this morning, I glimpsed the coyote, tail disappearing in the blackberries’
shadow between the houses, prints barely visible on the trail. Wild and wilding. I look
upwards to a migrating thicket of wings, ever-present compass.
My words fall hollow, full of acronyms, your body soft, full of betrayal.
Admitted for malnutrition, sepsis, late bloom of cancer. In the scan, innumerable stars in
the liver, knots lit up like constellations.
You told me that the day you decided to die it was a sunny afternoon when the
hummingbird paused in its fervency on your palm, your life complete, heart full and
broken. I think of the coyote vanishing, with a glance not a howl set free, the bird
whirring against the heart’s inevitable torpor.
Fractals in wet grass
Sunflowers bow in prayer
Winds release death, light
Seeds.
Annie Tubman is a family physician in Portland, Oregon who is passionate about medicine, poetry, and crossing long distances by foot or bicycle. During medical school she started a narrative medicine journal, and continue to bring stories of those around her to light.