Portrait of my love as a wolf
She is a lovely singer.
As the gibbous moon grows fat she sings
and all of us join the chorus
in glorious heterophony.
She is not a lone hunter.
We run together in the pack,
pouncing on the strongest victims,
taking the prey home for the old, the cubs, and the sick.
Her forty-two huge teeth are magnificent.
She can crack a bone
with a pressure of 1500 pounds per square inch,
yet can carry an egg in her jaws without cracking it,
one of her cubs without so much as marking the skin.
Yes, she is a good mother.
It's said sometimes her sisters have raised abandoned baby humans;
one such was Romulus, founder of Rome.
The tale goes on to say he murdered his brother,
something no wolf would do to his kin.
Sometimes I dream she turns into a human,
rampaging in her fury,
hunting down kin,
bestial, terrifying,
demonstrating the unfettered rage of the human id.
But I awake from the nightmare,
and she is my own lupine love again.
She is celibate for much of the year,
and has promised herself to me for life.
In eternity, she and I shall sing to the moon,
and dance on the hills
with her brother the fox.
August 7, 2006
- This poem is based largely on the poem, Wolf, written in June, 2000.
