BPR 50 | 2023
In the delicate release
of pups into the wild of New Mexico,
instinct drives the ranger’s hand
fiddling with the latch. He moves
by memory, rubbing
each pup’s fur with dirt and urine
and scurries out of sight
before the she-wolf
wakes in her den to find ten
where she had five, falls to
licking just the same.
She follows her own
blood-dark earth, its damp shape
calling her tongue—river of thick grass,
remnant of feather, bone, elk.
Away from the den the ranger’s body
still quakes, hardly aware
of his hands’ work,
their rehearsed movement.
But more than the ranger’s
muted motions
or the she-wolf ’s tracking of scent,
I want to know a wolf after a hunt,
fierce enough in its languor.
How a wolf like this one
might measure
the long hour of sun
and high grass and slow stride—
in the dive
of a sparrow or dart of a grasshopper?
What instinct takes hold in the sun,
when a wolf sits like a sphinx, haunches
high and legs outstretched and
the afternoon a wide, wide
field, color of corn,
quivering. Awake even now
when a wolf could sleep
like others do, wrapped
in dreams. Did she learn
by watching or did she know
when she came into the world
deaf and blind
as wolves do
left to seek and find
their mother’s milk.