Mother Wolf

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“The loss of the wolf is like the loss of the mother. Somewhere she roams in memory, in darkness. Our bond with her is inexplicable, before the beginning of time. She is fierce love; she is sorrow." 

-from The Memory Palace, by Mira Bartók

"The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them. How much sorrow can I hold? That's how much gratitude I can give.......Grief keeps the heart fluid and soft, which helps make compassion possible.

-Francis Ward Weller

i

In the dark cave, she stirs, 

nose twitching,

the scent of wildness and 

a cold north wind

luring her outdoors.

Her small ones huddle within, 

shivering, hungry.

It is a dangerous world.

The mother walks warily, 

eyes alert, watchful.

She keeps to the shadows, 

startling at every sound.

Her hunt for food requires 

skirting the ominous territory 

where the Other lives,

the Two-Leggeds with their 

clamor and their guns,
their ridiculous fear and hatred.

She may not make it home 

to the cave where 
her young ones wait, 

mewling pitiably.

ii

It is a perilous world 

for mothers of every species
and their young.

How to keep small ones alive and safe,

with danger on every side, 

and in the air we breathe?

iii

Our Great Mother mourns 

as she burns and floods,

her storms fierce with sorrow,

striving to find balance,

repeating her seasonal refrains, 

midst the bombs, the fires
and the fracking,

the emissions, the warming, 

the melting, the rivers running
with oil, the streets calamitous
with cars and blood -

the future hanging by a thread.

iv

How much sorrow can I hold?

As much as my love of her beauty,

her fierceness, her over-arching sky -

that much, and more,

I will love and grieve for her

and her wild creatures,

until the sandman shuts my eyes

on her heartbreaking, hopeful 
eternal beauty

for the last time.

for my prompt at Real Toads: the Wolf Mother