Susan Melinda Morée is grateful to have received a grant from New Mexico Writers to research the journey of Asha, a Mexican gray wolf who pushed past the boundary set for the endangered species. Wolf + Mythologies is the result of that research.

Lone Wolf

Every story should contain a wolf – a female free canine on the move in heat in the heat of the month of the January wolf moon. A wolf who heads east, who heads north, who crosses highways, who crisscrosses forests, who doesn’t stop, who can’t stop, elbow to elbow with the north star, following the moon and Mercury and Venus and blood red Mars, her blue black, white, yellow, russet thick fur her only solace, her only carpet to keep her safe from the wind and the men who tell their stories as she moves, call her lone wolf, call her sly, call her a thief in the night, claim she eats small children, like some creature in a fairy tale, blood dripping from her fangs, not her clever tail, as she shifts across the desert, mesquite laden land running along ancient time, the horizon of blue her only barrier and the red rock burns as the sun returns to her rest but the wolf carries on as the moon throws her cold glance upon the heated, mesquite stubbled earthen floor and the lone wolf runs from those narratives, those long ragged threads sewn into the earth like tree roots signaling each other until the story is a soiled cloth hanging from her hide as she heads south, catching her footing on the steep slope avoiding curves of the dirt road and the flying gravel and dust bushes from the men on the move in love with their own freedom in their four-wheel drive machines and their guns and their knives and she falls below the tree line under cover of underbrush and she runs harder, longer, ignoring the thorn weeds in her paws pricking her throat, pricking her legs, her muscles sore she chases rabbit, she chases mice to fill her belly because instinct drives her to fill her soul. She eyes the mule deer but a lone wolf hunts small and so she trudges on under piñon pine, she tramps on under Douglas fir, she limps along under cottonwood shiny leaves shaking out their own sorrows, she lumbers under box elder and Bluestem willow and rufus hummingbirds bullying off the other flying creatures from the feast of flowers springing hope too early, out of season at the edge of the salt cedar, the grandiose river brown and small and she threads her soul through the land, along the high plain turning back again, barring her teeth at the coyote and spans the four-lane interstate, shooting across the darkest of night and shifts north again, listening to the hooting owl, only her nose to guide her through low sandy plain thick with mesquite bush cover until she reaches the rush of trucks and the signs of people squatting  upon the flat-seeming earth, her land, the land she was born to and she heads east again and intersects with interstate and high beams and rests by a small pond dug for cattle bordered by barbed wire; she rests there but not for long because that inner voice seeking her own sovereignty goads her again and protects her again because by morning light the engines power up and begin again but she is gone, just a ghost or a speck long past on the horizon and on the move and she cuts north once more, now she’s nearly unshackled, her pace unchained, quickens, her paws ache, bleed, her heart unmuzzled, sings, singing for the love of place, for the love of desert, deserted, vibrant, living, just as she might just as she would and as the sun ensnares her, waking up the Sangre de Christo Mountains, she can’t stop, she is reaching home, she is about to be delivered beyond borders when the two-legged creatures who privilege her tame cousin close in and quiet her, seize her as if she belongs to them in a town the Spanish named “wild” and “untamed,” the lone female, the wolf alone is subdued, drugged, studied, collared and dragged back to borders unnatural and anew.

~

First the Wolf—

First the wolf headed east after she surveyed the hill, after she surveyed the hill that gave her warmth, that gave her warmth that gave her wholeness that gave her completion—

            but a shadow

            just a shade

                  perhaps a cloud

            perhaps

            the moon,

            perhaps,

            perhaps round and perfect          perhaps,

            perhaps as flat as a penny   perfect nickel 

            perhaps
                                                                                                                     Perhaps,

pricked her and poked her and goaded her, spurred her, it spurred her east, to set out eastward bound, she bolted off the grassy hill away from the flat sun and the green grass and the field of fallen trees, she left the chain link fence and the wild turkeys, their queries goosing the air and she left the historical markers and the directional signs along the side of the road and the pond orbited by crushed beer cans and she followed the moon path through the earth’s underbelly and made paw tracks in red dust, avoiding lonely mesquite bush and rushing cars circling the planet and sniffed the fleeting honey laden fry bread dancing cool in the air just at the river’s edge and followed the red rocks down a deep gorge to a long hill to a low slung slope still to be climbed, sought, mastered, still to be climbed, still to be sought, still to be mastered, still to be all those things and the wolf, the small wolf running under thick leaves, the large wolf escaping forest glen, shaking loose from his-stories and her-stories, that one wolf pondered the red, the ancient earth with her young paws, knowing not how this might end, knowing not that horizon blue but leaving, leaving comfort, leaving sorrow, leaving, leaving, always seeking—

~

Inside the Interstate

As the young woman wrapped the black box I bought with an unimportant trinket inside, chatted on about the wolf mix waiting in her backyard to jump and chase a rubber ball, ‘see?’ she said, leaning over the glass counter to show me photos on her phone, explaining the dog came with Catalina and shepherd in her blood, too, in the glow of the artificial warmth in a store where coffee is poured and pralines are sold in gold colored pouches and an imitation pine stands upright in the corner wrapped in twinkling gemstone lights over a Pine-Sol smelling laminate wood floor shiny under long strips of fluorescent lighting at an exit in Arkansas just off the I-40 interstate, I did not tell this young specimen on two legs that I am writing poems about a four-legged creature who pushed past the I-40 boundary set by men who would corral and tame her, who would keep her wild only within a confine of fixed points, a backyard full of procedure and protocol despite the ruby red sunset glow and the funk of the desert after a  hard rain and despite the mountains’ hang dog expression and the tiniest trickle of the rio.

~