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.