The skunk is early. Daylight Savings Time left 
it discombobulated as me, only 
more outspoken in fragrant opinion. Smelling 
this funk leaves a pungent smile, almost laughing. 
And the coyote before sunup, sprinting 
to keep out of sight and somehow find a meal. 
I’m the quiet one in this relationship—

move, they think I’m about to take a solo 
and fade fast, go invisible. Got to stay 
the motionless pine on which ravens land and 
dance, testing green limbs’ springiness with weight, 
needling the tree. One takes off, another lands 
on or close enough to the same spot, bouncing 
and heaving itself aloft. It’s enough to 

stay rooted. Tree and I have that much buried 
in the soil between us. Sky for incentive 
on the air’s bluer days, regardless of clouds. 
Might sound boring but it keeps me a heartbeat 
when a pulse is all a person might have left. 
That and a breeze circulating through the vacant 
hall, dust floating between sunup and sundown. 

* Title is from the title poem in John Ashbery’s collection A Wave (Penguin, 1985).

Poet’s Note

There has always been a fair amount of wildlife visiting from Turnbull Canyon. The Covid lockdown either increased those visits with the lack of human activity or at least became noticed more acutely. Add my natural tendency to stand back and watch what is going on, and you get something like this poem. It helps to watch and be reminded there is the potential for humor wherever you look.

Jonathan Yungkans

is a Los Angeles-based writer and photographer with an MFA from California State University, Long Beach. His work has appeared in San Pedro Poetry Review, Synkroniciti, West Texas Literary Review, Gleam: Journal of the Cadralor, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and other publications. His second poetry chapbook, Beneath a Glazed Shimmer, won the 2019 Clockwise Chapbook Prize and was published in February 2021 by Tebor Bach.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ It Belongs to Each of Us Like a Blanket by Jonathan Yungkans, Winner of “The Question of Questions” Ekphrastic Writing Challenge (Issue 15, September 2022)

⚡ Le Grand Matin by Yungkans, a Finalist in MacQ’s Triple-Q Writing Challenge (Issue 11, January 2022)

⚡ La Porte, ekphrastic poem in MacQ’s special Christmas Eve issue (10X, December 2021)

⚡ Two Duplex Poems, plus author’s notes on the poems and on the form, in Issue 10 of MacQ (October 2021)

⚡ Lawful and Proper, poem in Rise Up Review (Fall 2020)

⚡ Cadralor in the Key of F-Sharp as It Cuts into My Spine, in the inaugural issue of Gleam (Fall 2020)

⚡ I’d Love to Cook Like Hannibal Lecter [video], read by the poet at an event sponsored by Moon Tide Press (10 October 2019) celebrating the anthology Dark Ink: A Poetry Anthology Inspired by Horror

⚡ Saving the Patient, poem in The Voices Project (18 January 2018)