The Ofi Press Magazine

Poem by Glen Wilson (Northern Ireland, UK)

Published in The Ofi Press issue 47

Canis Lupus

For her to urinate for the first time

I must massage her tummy, my pink heat words

summoning her insides to flow.  She whines

but eventually wets the dirt. I don’t know

why I know this, perhaps a flinching of memory

made me lick the soft down.

We are all rooted in touch,

the passing on of thoughts

by staggering steps, I cannot

tell her how to hunt she must see

the hare upright, nose twitching,

gambling on scent.

She must track the lines I take,

notice how I stay upwind of my prey until

I can court closer than a lover. She must see

how deep to bite for life, how far up

the teeth the blood paints, how two rhythms

must become one.

I help her learn how the throat forms

the words and the breath pushes up

the volume. We howl and that

is our culmination, announcing

we are here, surviving, overcoming

the hurt and the fight.

I lie down and watch her chew and play

with the last of our dinner, an only child,

the runt that endured the rest of the litter.

I notice the creases in my own fur

tongue shaped, tufted up almost sharp,

a killer’s pattern, a mother’s stroke.