The wolf always comes at the last moment,
alone. He is never full,
you never can throw him enough bones.
When I see a wolf, even a photograph,
I shiver.
Something taut and frozen inside me wants to stretch on and on;
winter river, glint after glint stretched out under the sun.
This is the wolf:
what is left when you’ve tried to throw everything away.
Part of him lives in the city
where people stand in record stores at midnight
and move through the stacks,
their hands stumbling, confused,
abandoned, expected to make their way …
To find the wolf
look at anything wary, anything falling down.
That old woman on West Seventh
directing traffic with a torn branch,
the tree all twisted from growing between apartment houses.
Or the time I lifted the garbage can lid
finding the flowers
from when the baby downstairs died,
turned on their side in the bottom of the can;
bright yellow, still growing in the darkness.