Once I Heard My Father Cry
A wolf became trapped
in our cellar.
He pawed and nuzzled the walls
whimpering.
He rolled on his back
white throat and underbelly
naked. He howled for his tribe,
but the Mexican
gray-hairs had scattered.
Orphaned—
cast out
from the forest womb
he thought of the leaf-clump,
a yawp
at the tender mouth's
cave, longed for
his milk-teeth.
A phone rang in the graveyard
night,
and I awoke to white
fleece on my pillow.
*Originally published in Earth's Daughters
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