Wolf
I am wolf.
As the gibbous moon grows fat I sing
with my fellow moon-men
raising our voices
in glorious heterophony.
We hunt in packs,
carrying bloody spoils back
to feed the cubs, the sick, and the aged.
We cull our prey from the strongest victims,
though they graze peacefully within scent of us
when the wind blows from them
to our lairs.
I stand three feet from paws to backbone,
six feet long from muzzle to tail;
I weigh 120 pounds.
I have forty-two huge teeth
and I can crack a bone
with a pressure of 1500 pounds per square inch,
yet I can carry an egg in my jaws without cracking it,
a cub without so much as marking the skin.
Neighbouring packs live in peace with each other,
honouring each other's territories,
except when young males enter,
seeking a new gene pool to mate with.
I rarely attack human beings.
There are stories of abandoned baby children raised by wolves
all over the world
from Romulus and Remus
in the hills around Rome,
to Mowgli in the Indian jungle.
It is perhaps significant that Romulus murdered his sibling,
echoing Cain and Abel,
something no wolf would do to his kin.
There are also werewolves,
mythical lycanthropes,
hunting down human victims at full moon,
bestial, terrifying.
But the few genuine cases
demonstrate the unfettered rage of the human id,
not possession by the lupine spirit.
When a human being is a sexual predator
you call him wolf.
In Italy lupa means a whore:
But I am celibate for much of the year,
and often mate for life.
You have hunted me down,
fearing to look into my amber eyes
to see your own ugly visage reflected there.
I, for my part, am unafraid.
You are part of God's harmony,
though gone terribly discordant,
out of tune with the song we are given all to sing.
Give me the chance
and I shall raise your people up again
as your folklore tells I have oft-times done
with your feral mancubs.
For you, too,
once hunted in packs,
you nurtured your weak
and lived in accord
with the earth and all her kindred.
It is not yet too late to return to that state.
Come, I shall teach you to sing to the moon,
and to dance on the hills
with my brother the fox.
June 6, 2000
