Poor Wolf

Between your body and mine is this wand
wavering between the wolf and the will
to love one whose transformations conform
to no one’s needs. I don’t know who this is
willing to slake the thirst of an old man
whose wife sacrifices her mind only
to keep alive his own heart and body.

Between your lips and mine comes a slow beat.
A fountain of years pours into your womb.
I go back to my desk. His teeth glower,
his eyes grinding, his desire enigma,
two paws reach out to hold one hand nearby,
fur bristling with the desire to be soothed
or the need to claw me open to kiss

the inconsolable creation’s death,
the glimpse of beginning and end in one
fantasy of passage between two forms,
transmogrification of bayou life
and death so easeful it is warmed by sun
I never see anymore without ice
underfoot, glaring; one step, it’s over,

but at least there is this child to survive,
rendered by will alone to be here poised
upon the stone step. You lift your own heart
to the poor man whose hunger is for love
and nothing else, his hand helping you up
one at a time, each step growing younger,
earth turning, sun dizzy from its axis

and I know no words for the apogee
of life, not when it comes to this, the wind
and its pour of sky making perilous
all I have lived for, the child of my heart
with her sweet belly full of your bounty
and mine. At the top where our blood once flowed
for a rich man’s god, find food for the poor.

(16 March 2013)

copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander