Keening is a strange word that is almost obsolete in English. It describes a sound that is piercing and eerie and is associated with sadness/lament. I wrote this on a night when I was very isolated, backpacking deep in the highcountry of the Sierras. On previous trips I had normally hiked with my brother, and you will see references to "we" in earlier poems like the Whitney Summit one [https://steemit.com/poetry/@mdbrantingham/whitney-summit-sequoia-national-park-1988].

As we grew older, we grew apart, and on this trip I was alone and I wanted to tell him that I missed him, but I felt like it was sort of prohibited by fate, that that would never happen because of the way life is, that there are just some things about life that you can never fix.

Then the solitary cry of a coyote lifted up into the air from beyond the ridgeline. It reached like slender fingers through the air and wrapped my heart because it reminded me of times when my brother had been with me. So not literal fingers, but sort of spiritual fingers of sound and emotion.

Years later I learned that the name of the place, Kaweah (a Yokut indian word), refers to the cry of a crow or coyote. Just crazy.