When You Love a Wild Thing

This is for a prompt at Real Toads: to take a quotation from Breakfast at Tiffany's:
I chose this one, (of course)!

"...you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up, ...[i]f you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky."


— Truman Capote (Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories)
 
When you love
a wild thing,
you're rekindling
your kinship
with the wild.
 
Every cell
in your body
remembers
when you once
lived free
upon the land,
when you
lived
the Old Ways
we once
used to
understand.
 
Part of you
remembers
when you
hunted the deer,
and part remembers
when you were
the deer
being hunted.
Both sides
know fear.
 
The part of you
that catches
your breath
while your heart
quickens,
when that
old gray whale
turns her
ancient eye
on you,
is the part
that recognizes,
but can't
put words to,
the message
in her
mournful song,
about this
planetary home
where we all
belong.
 
I gave my heart
to a wolf-pup,
his eyes
intelligent
and true.
He loved
me more
than anyone
I ever knew.
 
He remained
wild,
but left
both
wilderness
and sea.
In order
to be with me
he relinquished
being free.
 
And when
it came
his time
to leave,
he tried
so hard
to stay.
Since he's
been gone,
it's like
the wilderness
itself
has gone
away.
 
Now
when I walk,
yes,
I'm looking
at the sky.
I'm listening
at each full moon
for his lonely
cry.
 
I walk
the length
of his favorite river
with tears
that we're apart.
But I'm glad
I loved a wild thing
because he
fortified
my heart.