Tracking the Wolf
Poems by John Pilkey
Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Hunters in the Snow (1565)
I've wounded it because I see its blood
beside these tracks imprinted in the snow
despite the living speed that makes it go
into the gathering thickness of a wood.
I would have killed it swiftly if I could
for wildness and for certain things I know
about its lupine politics of woe
where howling infidelity has stood.
This wolf has loped for centuries abroad
for more than two to howl against our God
and gathered up a pack of its own kind
to swarm where holy ministers once trod.
But now I see its panting eyes behind
a tree trunk and will punish what I find.
John Davis Pilkey
