A Poem
Now and then, I’ll share one of my poems, as I’ve done here. On the wonder of ancestral connections.
Woman and Wolf
The animal must have been tied
deep inside her
wrapped sticky wet
around her bones
concealed
from all who stared
wondering
just how exactly she was marked.
Claws everywhere
were disguised
by the smiles she learned
as a child,
one of ten
at a dining room table.
Her lace collar was tight
around the beating tail.
She thought it was her heart.
“My goodness,”
she said one day at last,
“I seem to have swallowed a wolf.”
The woodcutter came into the wrong story.
Slit the woman with a knife he used
for carving chairs.
She lay there embarrassed by her entrails
which a lady wasn’t supposed to show—
apologized for the matted fur
the second heart beat
and a howl
she was sure she didn’t eat on purpose.
The man kept slicing.
She lay wide open
amidst the table settings,
silver serving trays,
turnips and spoon
beside her left ear.
Down alongside her right hip
was the little gravy boat
that had sailed with the family
from that port in Annan
all those years ago
before the woman and wolf were born
right here in this farm house
with its rose-covered carpets.
The other offspring cowered.
Checked themselves for lupine tendencies.
“Hold her ankles while I pull it out,”
said the woodcutter.
The father held one ankle,
the husband held the other,
and beside her right ear
with the plate of boiled carrots
her mother must have said,
“Hold still,”
because she was very still
compared to the animal
scuttling out
who left
its bloody paw prints on the roses.
From In Green (Guernica Editions)
© Robin Blackburn McBride
