Lord of the Forest

The buck hears my steps
…………..and huffs sharply
………………………..just beyond the leaves—
shimmering aster,
…………..viburnum purpling,
………………………..beech, maple, and oak.
Does would have leapt
…………..up and away,
………………………..tails fluttering.
He stays. He does not care
…………..to be disturbed
………………………..in his ruminations.
Beyond the green curtain,
…………..some have seen Christ
………………………..standing between antlers
or Cernunnos at rest,
…………..legs folded like a yogi.
………………………..But the buck is what he is,
an old god getting older,
…………..point by point,
………………………..his antlers holding
summer’s canopy,
…………..falling in deep winter
………………………..like broken branches.
You will not see him
…………..in the glassy eyes of effigies
………………………..mounted on walls.
He cannot be hunted down.
…………..He’s fathered generations
………………………..that scrape the ground,
his tears, his pheromones,
…………..wiped on twigs,
………………………..his velvet, bark-brown,
rubbed off on trees,
…………..his scat a declaration
………………………..in the midst of the trail.
I saw it without believing
…………..he was near.
………………………..I take another step.
He chuffs, louder, from his sanctum.
…………..The hair lifts on my arms
………………………..and I back up, then turn
from where his heart-shaped tracks,
…………..point the way
………………………..deeper into the woods.

Good Fences
Wolf Conservation Center, NY 

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall—
I’ve seen the wolves here leap and climb chain-link
and claw dirt down to buried steel and stone.
But in this artificial wilderness
with acres for each pack and roadkill deer
shared out, no one fights for new turf or old.
So those who might have died by bite and slash
live long enough to watch neighbors raise pups
beneath New England oak and hickory.
The Rocky Mountain grays nap close beside
the Arctic wolf’s enclosure, and red wolves
from down south trot out when they hear his whine.
He watches them tail-flirt and form a tie,
and now and then flips sticks or leaves in the air
when they lope past. The lobo who lost his mate
play-bows then jumps and trots along the fence
across from a red wolf, who does the same,
ears perked. Lupine tai chi—no barks, no snarls,
only the thump of paws and soft panting.
Evolutionary. Like the way people changed
enough to make this place, where wolves find peace
and time to contemplate their kin and kind.
Come any day to hear their call and response,
one wolf setting off another, one pack
another, one species another, one
unbounded, communal howl echoing down
rocky slopes to the road. Stand at the gate,
look up and cup your hands around your mouth—
Sing oh-ohoo. Let your note waver, rise,
and fall. Sometimes they even answer you.