There’s a seven foot tall wolf
With dog-like legs
Stepping upright
Beneath the moonlight
In the backyards
Of shadows
By stars
Suppressing growls
With a click
Of human teeth grown into its jowls

It’s sick
And knows it
Stoically standing
With prickly yellow eyes,
Slashed gashes for eyelashes,
And streaks of blood on its cheeks

I move on all fours
Through the doors
Like fog off the moors
Encroaching undercover
My heart’s racing
I’m placing the human flesh
Of my paw
On its canine palm—
A calm decompresses
The steeled shield of its breast;

A song splashes with the brook
A memory unlatches along with ashes to ashes
On the pages and pages of column passages—
Torn upon the same solemn psalm in my book