THE ANIMAL SORROW OF WOLVES
That philosophical understanding of carnage,
that concentration
of the species.
—Gerald Stern
It was not easy making friends with wolves.
I'd sit on a ladder by the wire-link fence,
careful not to make eye contact or they'd lunge—
their yellow eyes; calendulas eating the sun,
hot flickering grassfires and phosphorus.
I'd listen to them worry cow hocks (or was it
horse?)
across the stained plywood partition,
the bones echoing with a hollow thud.
Was it the slaughterhouse stench of dead meat
or the primal odor of concentrated wolf?
Full moons, they'd answer in chorus for unseen
kin—
ambulances, fire engines and police cars
the cubs knowing only the endless pacing of
caged life.
The man who kept wolves—the town dog catcher.
Late afternoons, I heard his woman sobbing and
crooning
like a sleepy child. Did she really come like
that?
I felt envy, slow to notice my lover's eyes had
turned
the color of Indian corn. I learned to sing
louder
and longer with each passing stranger
running a practiced hand along my flank
until I was wolf-mother beneath the fig tree
sucking a rivaling empire of boys in men's
bodies.
Sensitized by pain, I sang best, seeking asylum,
I studied the flight of vultures and despaired;
was the idea of love, a vulgar carcass of bees
and hornets,
romance, attainable as the horizon, or Mars?
Each moon, a new eye. I learned carnelian
hunger,
my spoor took on the scent of wolf
and I devoured the Möbius circle of desire.
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