Bow Thank You to the Wolves

A long blur of white
stretching horizonward,
she had been here before,
she was sure of it.

Old memories played silently
across the tip of her tongue
and those old, sad songs drifted by
close enough to touch,
both though,
were beyond her grasp.

Each night
the moon tiptoed across the heavens
drawing her fascination,
and her eyes would follow it
from star to star.

The north wind howled,
and the blind Choctaw spoke once aloud
and seven times in a whisper
as he drank in her dream
and spat it out untold
into her left hand.

Is it that bad, she thought,
that a mere taste of it
could make a proud man whimper?
"When the dream be told,"
the blind man said,
"then you will surely understand."

Her memories came and went,
unbidden,
into the secret place
closeted in the great,
gray sea of her mind
where dreams dwell.

Tracks across the snow,
red and white impressions,
she looked where the black bear had walked
and cried cold tears,
unwept ones from her memory,
and caught them in her hand as they fell,
so no one would see them.

The moon shined,
the wolves howled,
and the blind Choctaw
bowed his head in silence.

She moved her hands toward the wolves
as if so doing
would convey her apology
for the insertion of herself
into their solitude.

The red bitch whined,
the far stars winked,
and a song in her memory
urged her toward the wolves.

As she moved,
the wolves howled,
the wolves moved,
the wolves talked,
and told her in a way
she did not understand,
that there was something more here
she should see.

The red bitch spoke
of the black bear's children
playing and frolicking
just over the hill.

Bow thank you to the wolves,
rush up the hill,
a slow stare down yon side.
There! Two children,
their mouths to the wind.

A red-golden, straw-haired, white skinned,
naked boy child,
brown-black and graceful,
her eyes of blue,
a she bear cub.
Standing side by side singing,
sister. . .brother.

The one, born to be true,
the other, discarded.
On the top of the hill,
standing snow heap high,
one wild-gone girl
innocently thinking
she knew the answer
to the question raised to the air
by their mingled hearts.

Stale rage,
she read from the one,
and from somewhere,
sweet beauty.
The other,
so carefully thought,
she did not dare
to assign one of these two,
to the one who had been discarded,
nor,
to the one
who had been born to be true.

One moment,
one away glance,
the tail of a song,
and she knew in a heartache
before she looked back
that the two. . .
like children,
would be gone.
Bow thank you to the wolves.