The Voice of the Wolf

He seems to speak in single thoughts.  One thought, one poem.  Short.  Perhaps he's struggling with this new way of speaking/thinking.  Or perhaps I'm just unable to translate the complexity of wolf-thought into English.  I suspect it's the latter.

On a side note...I usually write poems ranged left, with indents.  But it didn't look right when I was typing them up here, and so I tried them centred instead.  Hmmmm...I think I rather like it.

(1)

I, in tooth and claw

pelt and paw

saw you first.

Balanced in air

sky dancing there

between heaven and earth

a peculiar bird

above my head.

Feet calloused, bare

not-ever-brushed-hair

fingernails grimed with dirt

a leaf creeping girl

whose scraped knees bled.

And I knew you were wild like me.

(2) 

I, beWILDered and beWOLFéd 

dare not think 

of a girl in a tree 

with eyes like leaves. 

Fur legged or two legged 

it is the same. 

I dream my head on her soft breast. 

Her nipple between my teeth. 

(3) 

My words 

are leaf mould 

are falling autumn leaf 

steeped in humous rich and black. 

My poetry 

scribbled in 

the desperate flight of the hare 

the falling flight of the lark. 

How can I tell her I love? 

(4) 

From her tongue 

such singing comes 

my hail to the moon is dust in my mouth 

and all my song struck dumb. 

(5) 

Too rough for caress. 

Yet I 

in tooth and claw 

would bare my breast 

to the bright spear point for her. 

(6) 

This man-skin 

an unfamiliar thing 

four legged to two legged. 

Too long a quadruped 

my gait is halting 

and unsure. 

And I did not know 

how to use my hands 

until I came to her. 

(7) 

When I am man 

there is some part 

that stays unmanned. 

When wolf 

a part 

 unwolf. 

The hand that shaped me 

shaped us incomplete. 

Imperfect cyphers who compete 

for a whole 

that cannot exist.

Fergus asleep.  He won't stay still long enough for me to draw him awake, and he does NOT like the intense stare I give him when I'm concentrating on drawing, so if he notices me, he turns around and presents his back to me!

Please remember all the poems here, and the visual images, are © Christina Cairns, and don't copy or share without permission.