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Welcome to TRI Studio's Poet Page. We will feature different poets periodically on this page, so please
remember to check back and find out who they are, read their poems, and learn more about them.

TRI Studio's Featured Poet:

Poets and authors interested in
being featured on this page, please
click here and introduce yourself.

TRI Studio is pleased to present our featured poet, David
Coyote.

David Coyote lives with an appreciation for the gift of life.
His poetry is a call to experience the joy that comes from
this gift, combined with a cry for harmony in a troubled
world that seems to have forgotten what truly matters.

Please enjoy his biography, five of his poems, and find out
about his publications listed below.

ABOUT THE POET

DAVID COYOTE writes:

Thanks to modern pharmaceuticals and the talents of an amazing surgeon, I am surviving myasthenia
gravis. It's a tough dancing partner. For a while I wasn't sure if I could learn the steps. Still got my dance
card. I can see, eat, drink and breathe again. I am very grateful. I think of myself as the luckiest guy in the
world.

Born in Chicago, blues capitol of the world, exported to California at the tender age of four, learned to ride
horses, swam in the Pacific Ocean, speared fish, dove for abalone, explored the wild, wild west and the
amazing Baja Peninsula.

(Take a breath.)

Went to San Diego Junior and State College. Stuck nose an' fingers in almost everything. Thankfully some
of it stuck. There was that thing referred to as a military obligation. Received three honorary discharges.

Lived in Berkeley in the 60s...studied life. Owned and operated a little specialty restaurant, worked in a
framing gallery and did a lot of sculpting in metal and clay. America was suffering brave and terrible times.
Conscience awoke to bitter realities and called heart to join mind.

I abandoned the mainland in 1967 to live in the rainforests of Hawaii. Stayed eleven years. There's some
magic…the Big Island… Madam Pele, Mauna Kea…Mauna Loa and the Kilauea volcano. To pay for life’s
necessities I designed and built homes. For a couple of years, I acted as a facilitator in the Freshman
Integrated Program at the Hilo campus of the University of Hawai'i.

Seven biographies and numerous poems were published in a national non-profit organization's quarterly.
Two of my short stories are in anthologies published by LBF Books. My first novella, Roomful Of
Rainbows, was published in 2004. Got another novella in the works. Hope it gets into print before the
grim reaper taps me on my shoulder.

Readers can get in touch with David by visiting his website at www.dcoyote.com or sending
email to dcoyote@san.rr.com

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

1. All That Glitters, published in Emerging
Voices, an anthology available from
LBF Books.

2. A Beautiful Fish: published in Holiday
Choir, an anthology available from
LBF Books.

3. Roomful of Rainbows - a novella available
from Publish America, 2004

BUY NOW: Click on cover - you
will get the author's email. He will
sell to you directly because it's
less expensive for you

Poems by David Coyote
All poems on this page are copyrighted by David Coyote

Click here to read TRI Studio's
INTERVIEW with DAVID

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

LOOKING ONTO LIFE’S POND

Dance with me,
Dance with me, life!

I, in my comfortable chair,
contemplate time ticking me closer
to my last inhalation of magical energies
wearing the name ‘life’,
while outside my open window,
onto natures stunning beauty,
I watch whispering Papyrus tips dance,
celebrate each passing breath of air.

Dance with me,
Dance with me, life!

How can I, in this neither slow nor fast ‘now’,
reach into past and resurrect the combination
to open the safe behind eyes to worldly mysteries,
that two clumsy thumbs and eight fingers
find their home at these keys
and in so doing
leave those soft impressions
on the hearts of all I love?

Dance with me,
Dance with me, life!

I want to sing in such a voice
the world may not have heard;
a Joshua at the walls of apathy,
to fill empty hearts and tired souls
with courage to face all tomorrows,
to send the mystery ships of everyone who hears
onto a mirrored sea of perfect inspiration
reflecting the highest goals we can embrace.

Dance with me,
Dance with me, life!!

If I had a mind for prayer I’d pray.
Action seems more the food that fills my belly.
Before life ticks you away, take my hand.
Let us spin the globe’s steady revolutions
to a future where ignorance and prejudice have no home.
Protect each from nature’s harsh and hard to sing tunes.
May every child have those things they need.
Fear, abuse and terror - be forever interred.

Dance with me,
Dance with me, life!

Join me in threads and jewels of things remembered.
Hold hands and dance this onetime jig,
this reel of better tomorrows;
Wait not for gilded priests of caution,
sages of reconsideration, political leaders who lead
nowhere.
You know what’s right and you have the right.
Look around. Encourage the world,
Pick up your tools! Show the world it can be done.

Dance with me,
Dance with me, life!

These Words

these words,
curled upon the pillow of my tongue, slept
while I idled in daydream childhood
traveled with me
from mother’s knee to waiting world
each step prepared them
for this moment
now set them free.

these words
hold hands,
workers united against tyranny and wrong
sing of unity, a song,
a call to those who’ve fallen
to join, to reform family
based on fairness
not on greed,

a need forgotten in bright lights
and star-struck adoration
cruelly crushing those beneath
to reach some promise,
then to find it
empty of human kindness,
void of ethic,
murdered by men in power.

these words,
sing them.
let them ring
so all the world will hear,
so children on their way to school
will learn the song,
sing along
will make it happen.

these words
awaken others
from the comfort of their pillow,
whisper in my ear,
keep me from sleep,
stir my tongue
to utter something brighter
least I weep.

It's About Time

I don't remember when
I started thinking about time
and what it meant to my life.
It had something to do
with not being late to school.
Hands locked behind, time somehow grew.

Now it's wearing another face,
unmasked to show me
what it's done to mine.
Time is a serious author of plays
adding lines to the story of skin.
My life's novel is now a phrase.

What used to seem months is now days.
It plays with me, that impatient child,
tugs my sleeve and whines,
me, the distracted parent with pet
that wants in or out of the door.
The sun just rose? Now it's set.

I think it is getting faster.
If those statisticians are right
I'm past the halfway mark
on my way to a grave mortality,
I suddenly feel quite alone.
That thought smacks of finality

Between that first breath and last,
what's this all about,
this get up, work, lie down, eat, sleep
march toward the unknown?
What a hunger, this thing called time.
Here - chew on this beat-up old bone.

Mortality Knocked

I sensed my mortality today,
its presence, not the idea,
as though it had moved a step closer.
I don’t think much of death
for life insists I think of it.
I’m sure death has its own agenda,
that there is little I can do when it comes
but let it take me and make me other.
I don’t want to be afraid of death,
and I wasn’t today, but the sense of its breath
made me stop writing and listen.
I’ll be ready when the time comes.
Something will use these atoms and energy
to weave a wonderment of new beginnings
that will be their end when death calls,
and flings the thing we call life
around the feet of another new possibility.
I want to make my life perfect
so my death will begin new things
the same way.

If Not Now

From home I see the tops of rocky hills
where younger days sent running feet to play
among the boulders strewn; there were no bills
to pay the one who made them. Now today
I dream of wildness once explored when life
was simple; mornings promised freedom’s game
not fear. But now I find it full of strife.
What madness drives a people so insane?
I’d rather dream a world where all were free,
where no one slept or woke to sounds of war,
a world of reason, one in harmony
with every voice, a place of peace and more.

I think it really has to start with me,
or otherwise it may not come to be.