At the abandoned farm
in the clearing shrunk
from the field it was,
woods of birch
and hickory sprung
from the forest’s axeing –
American trees still awake
in their Indian names,
old field measured out
in blunt immigrant speech –
I was a man with his dog
running out
on the snowclapped
glazed winter grasses
gone into scrubland.
Some look in his eye
not dog’s but wolf’s
pierced me. Running
again through the edges
of clearings the late
sunlight blazed in,
pond ice, bracken,
saplings risen again
from their winters, away
on some plain
answering only ourselves
we were wolves howling.