Second Coming No. 561 — August 3, 2026
A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by Donald Trump and his fascist regime
Daniel Nathan Terry
The Hatching Moon
June 10, 2025
Coyote comes to the garden gate
when I wake—there
he stands silvered
in moonlight. Trickster
or Sage? Omen to turn
back or call to transform?
Those who first held
this land could never
pin him down—Huehuecoyotl.
Ancient Drum. Storyteller.
Sex-Changer. Shapeshifter
taking on new faces, new
identities. Cabellero of Music.
Dios de la Danza, yellow
paint across your eyes,
necklace of shells, coral snake
for a tongue. My dreams were vexed;
all night the dogs wouldn’t rest,
so we left the safety
(but what is safety now?)
of the dark bedroom.
The Strawberry Moon
shouldn’t have this effect.
It is June; where are the roses,
the ripened yield, the weddings
(oh, first harvest, what
will we reap now the blooms
of hate and othering bear
fruit in the streets of LA
and the tanks break
ground in DC)? The Cree
of Canada had another
name for this low slung
light: The Hatching Moon
in honor of all Earth’s
children who managed
to crack, claw, beak, or birth
their way into life. Equal
in transformation
from egg to awakened
soul. Moon Curser, Traverser
of Deserts, Crosser
of Boundaries, let me
open this gate and welcome
you in—Coyote—you
and I both just two woke
sons of the Hatching Moon.
Daniel Nathan Terry is the author of the poetry collections Capturing the Dead (NFSPS, 2008), Waxwings (Lethe Press, 2012), and City of Starlings (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2015). His poems have appeared in Cimarron Review, The Greensboro Review, Chiron Review, The Crab Orchard Review, The McNeese Review, and other journals. A former landscaper and horticulturist, he lives in Wilmington, NC, with his husband, printmaker and curator Benjamin Billingsley.
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