Medicine Tail
The gravel under our feet made too much noise,
I thought, at least in the dark.
Everything for a mile could hear us, I thought.
And there was mostly everything around us —
trees and grass and ditches iced at the bottom
and fence posts strung with wire and also animals —
prairie dogs and cattle and coyotes and and grouse and black-footed ferrets
and the ghosts of wolves a hundred years gone from the gulches and draws
and coulees.
We left the shotguns in the back of the car stuck in the mud
and we walked for a house you said you knew was just a little further
up the road.
Your father, an Marlboro man in a Stetson before there were Marlboro men,
and his people, knew this place
(there was a ranch that you and I drove up on earlier in the day).
You know this place too
enough to know where there are houses
and not to walk into a dark farmyard too quietly out of the dark.
I was looking at the sky too long as we walked and you laughed like people laugh
who live constantly is beauty but temper it with reality.
(Coyotes shouted at each other. How far away? I thought.)
And I seem to remember I grabbed your arm then
and you howled.
You were still howling as we headed up a dirt track to the house.
And a black chin-high shape approached.
I thought maybe it was a dog.
But more like a llama.
A llama in fact.
And you howled again.
You are still howling.
The ghost of a grey wolf trotting akimbo in a ditch beside a gravel road
until all you can see is the tail shining in the black.