There are wolves in the city now
& It was a wolf who whispered
forests into beginning.
Whose mournful howl
woke the stars to help the moon
brighten and salt the earth.
You do not need
to follow a tree into the forest
scouting wild.
Let the tree be what it be.
Wild calls the ramble of the city
and the forest, all neon and wooded.
When we get older, we will grow feral
and forget this fact,
forget the convergent evolution
that made wolves of many. Man,
canid, dire and dawn who all
met the same staged moon.
Birthed from the inky afterbirth
of darkness, life comes enduring.
A single thread multiplying
to form many
or perhaps, many threads single
into one. A note
to be sung by the throat of the wolf
that preyed on the weak,
yet created and protected the thread
that singled, stalwart and silver,
stitching together wild in the hollow of cities
where forests become more than they intended.
Danielle Fleming is a social worker, dog mom, and writer living in Louisville, Kentucky with her husband. Her work has been featured in Bellarmine Magazine, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Tiger Moth Review, The Hopper, and Pidgeonholes. She can be found on Instagram as @havendf or Twitter @danismalley10.
Header image by Randy Rodriguez, courtesy Pixabay.
