Alpha, Omega: Song of the Gray Wolf
Tireless silhouettes they eat miles, consume
the crisp April snowfields in a gliding trot here
in the Blacktail Deer Plateau among the northwestern
folds of Yellowstone National Park. The biologists
who study Canis lupus have been instructed
not to give them individual names, so it might be
Number Two or Wolf Fifty-Six that tugs scraps
off the bones of an elk carcass, scattering ravens
and two scavenging bald eagles which flap heavily
up into an aspen. The coyotes here are half wiped out
by wolves, though there are but five distinct species.
In Montana's Big Hole Valley, a wolf is at the edge
of a snowy calving pasture, eating afterbirths, its teeth
broken and dull from biting at the metal pen that confined it.
Ecologically elastic, these creatures are tough, long-range
fur missiles which have been tracked 550 miles from home.
Not two weeks back, this scene: a mother cow bawls
among yellow meadow blossoms, refuses to leave
the half-devoured body of her new calf. Now steel traps
lay ready, and caught wolves get a single bullet through
their brain. Sunlight and fresh mountain winds strip away
the shadows of wolf-lore. In medieval times The Book of
Beasts warned that the devil "bears the similitude of a wolf,
he who is always looking over the human race with his evil eye,
and darkly prowling the sheepfolds of the faithful." Still,
we fear wolves, their long-legged bodies and questing eyes.
This night, as all nights, an elk disappears over the brow
of a black-timbered ridge with a wolf hanging off each shoulder.
The moonlight thickens, stark and chill, and cannot tear itself away.
Over and over, the echo-laughter rises to the evening clouds.
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