Long before I even owned one, my love of Wolves has been a mystery even to me. I have written many poems on Wolves, inspired I guess by their keen ability to survive despite often-times insurmountable odds. No one ever tells you of the prey that got away and how many times Wolves go for months in harsh winters without any food to feed their pack members, including young cubs. On TV, of course, you see the crude hunt - the bring down of game into a successful bloody splash and tumble - on TV you see the Wolves winning all the time, coming home from the Great Hunt with battle scars and full bellies. Again, that's Hollywood!! In real life, Wolves take down the old, the feeble, and yes, sometimes they manage to snare a young prey from its outwitted mother, but that is the law of averages, the law of survival of the fittest, and, more often than not, they return to their dens empty-handed. You will rarely see this on the Discovery Channel. Are we, as homo-sapiens, that much different than the Wolf? I tell you where the difference lies...unlike most other species out there, we as humans kill our own kind for little reason or nothing, and face facts, haven't humans annihilated other species to extinction for pure and senseless sport even...there's your difference, like it or not. If I offend anyone, I'm sorry, especially to all the Hunters and Trappers out there, and don't I know there's plenty of them. Let's try to Co-Exist - there is space for us all, and, by the way, WOLVES WERE HERE FIRST, aren't we trespassing on their territory?

tormented fire
of my weeping
sonnet-cold
deliverance of this autumn-shattered morning

guns spilling through the mist
i hear a deer fall
in the bleeding grass

etched
in my writhing
fused to the bone
of my chilling wonderment turned
to iced dismay:

fine line of beauty meeting
metal, not much difference
when its Death that meets it

the lines all disappear in the
blur of finality - which never
comes back

sympathetic
whimpering
in the stillborn gloom of dusk
opening
its first real closure of the day

a cub left orphaned in the wooded glen
seeks out his shadow for company
until the sun erases the remains
of his simple, bewildered 
and lonely pleasure . . .

achingly caustic
this song from the Woods
spilling ribboned words of wasted
pellets
down throats of soft rabbits

what a world
that would choose
blood
over visions of ethereal gifts
in the forms of grazing Buffaloes
and Eagles' breaths.

i knock to get out
standing there,
a hole in my chest the size of Eternity:

i lay there dying
a hole in my chest from a
nameless Bullet meant for the Wolf beside Me.

Don't Blame the Wolf

You see a great crime,
 	and you bleed.
I am sorry.
	I only come and go.
You say you love the Wolf
	but then you blame him
for being Wild.-

Written by a friend, Dennis S. {1988} for me, 
to teach me that loving something
or someone bad enough is the easy part . . .
it's how you choose to love them back that's equally
if not more important.