Petition for Reintroduction

I don’t want to get emails from

            the wolf people anymore, but

they know where I am—have known

            precisely where for five years.

The saying to trot out here is I don’t know

            how this happened, but it did, and

I do: in line before a show at the little Boulder

            theater, approached, I took off

my gloves to sign my wobbly hand

            to the clipboard. All my vegan

friends thought it was a good idea.

            They’ve given their lives such

serious thought, and I don’t know shit

            about wolves—never introduced

in the first place, let alone reintroduced,

            which is what the wolf people

were advocating for. A coyote, sure, or

            foxes, of course, despite the terrifying

screams. One night in Dublin, thick with

            beer, I saw a silent fox waiting

on the stairs, beneath a plaque for Jonathan

            Swift. The fox felt more like him,

Jonathan, than the death masks, more

            honest than all the cathedral’s crap

about sharing his bedtime lamp with

            his good friend Stella. I hope they were

good friends, joined at the wick; I do

            hope wildness flickered at their tips.

For me, this has been the ideal: the roots

            deeply sown, a solid grip from

the earth held fast so the branches fly

            free. The limbs daring a little more

in their bloom. I do hope the wolves hear

            the aspens beneath whispering

their return. It has begun. (I read the emails.)

            I like to imagine the wolves, now,

at the fringes of an alpine meadow,

            recognized by the blue and purple

buds, the latent snow. The water beneath

            them diverted by a ridge: two paths

toward different halves of the world. The people

            downstream debate their habits, if

we’ll like when we all meet. The wolves simply

            go, signatures beneath their feet.