Wolf Moon - Early January

A sharp sneeze, then an awareness

Of small feet padding toward our heads.

My watch reads five-o-six and,

Like clockwork, the older spaniel

Needs to empty out and fill back up.

Cold pours in as I part the curtains

And open the sliding glass door.

It feels like first light,

But that’s not right: the wolf moon,

Shining through the bare branches

Of the maple next door, feigns daylight,

Bathing our snuffling twosome

 In its vanilla glow.

They don’t look up, and make no effort

To howl, as legend has it, a proper wolf

Would.  These distant diminutive  descendants

Do bark, but only to echo the calls

Of other canids down the block.

Toward a scentless, silent celestial orb

They appear wholly indifferent.

This mild scene did get me thinking

About wolves and our vexed history

With them.  Apex predators like us,

Their ranks are so depleted that they

Have reached the point of pointlessness.

Nevertheless, many of our two-legged kind

 Still malign them - a ravenous hoard we say –

We billions whose predations put

The fiercest wolf to shame.  Who’s

Howling triumphantly now in the

Crimson gleam of a blood moon?