My uncle paid his sons two dollars
for every coyote ear they brought home.
Clean cuts only—tips and halves thrown
off the porch as rat food while
silvers and large ones were trophied
on the wood-paneled wall of the den.

For years I searched the woods
for earless coyotes. Never saw one.

So when that lone paddler landed,
a shivering cage of ribs
on the wet rocks of Alcatraz,
I didn’t wonder the motivation.
I thought about sundial mottos
—both sanguine and salty—
the packs of people
who would rather live on Mars,
and that single coyote’s future
on the island, stalking mice
in succulent gardens, marking
former prison walls, reclaiming the penitence
we abandoned in our fogged-up cells.

As if swimming to the next rock over
could save him. As if it could save us.