To celebrate Wolf Awareness Week (Oct. 16-22), I thought I’d celebrate with some pack-related poetry. I have the privilege of volunteering with a couple of wolves at the Chestatee Wildlife Preserve in Dahlonega, Ga. In light of the news this week, I’m sure I’m not the only one with a heavy heart for the senseless loss of animal life in Ohio, and also for the law enforcement officers who had a terrible but unavoidable task to protect the public. Surely laws in that state regarding the keeping of exotic animals will be strengthened now.
If you happen to be in north Georgia, I'll be presenting a session for kids featuring wolf information next month on Sat., Nov. 12, at 3 p.m. at the Dahlonega Literary Festival.
Here are a couple of poems I wrote a while back about the captive wolves I’ve been honored to know.
The Bottom Line
Sit, Luna.
I hold a piece of cheese above her nose.
Her back end hits the ground.
But she knows and I know:
A wolf only sits if she wants to.
© Robyn Hood Black, all rights reserved
Butterfly Dance
Yellow butterfly
flits and floats outside the pen.
Gray wolf leaps and prances inside -
matching movements,
up and down,
following buttery wings.
La Mariposa.
Musky, muscular,
magnificent
she-wolf
dances
the
Butterfly Dance.
© Robyn Hood Black, all rights reserved
Note: In Women Who Run With the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estes describes a solo tribal dance in New Mexico called the “Butterfly Dance.” Traditionally, Hopi youth perform a social dance called “The Butterfly Dance” in late summer.
Attempts are ongoing in the Southwestern United States to reintroduce the Mexican Wolf, the most genetically distinct type of gray wolf. Efforts have not met with the same success as the reintroduction of wolves in the greater Rockies. For updated USFWS Mexican wolf information, click here and here.
And for wonderful poetry, go see what Jama’s got cookin’ for the
Poetry Friday Roundup.
If you happen to be in north Georgia, I'll be presenting a session for kids featuring wolf information next month on Sat., Nov. 12, at 3 p.m. at the Dahlonega Literary Festival.
Here are a couple of poems I wrote a while back about the captive wolves I’ve been honored to know.
The Bottom Line
Sit, Luna.
I hold a piece of cheese above her nose.
Her back end hits the ground.
But she knows and I know:
A wolf only sits if she wants to.
© Robyn Hood Black, all rights reserved
Butterfly Dance
Yellow butterfly
flits and floats outside the pen.
Gray wolf leaps and prances inside -
matching movements,
up and down,
following buttery wings.
La Mariposa.
Musky, muscular,
magnificent
she-wolf
dances
the
Butterfly Dance.
© Robyn Hood Black, all rights reserved
Note: In Women Who Run With the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estes describes a solo tribal dance in New Mexico called the “Butterfly Dance.” Traditionally, Hopi youth perform a social dance called “The Butterfly Dance” in late summer.
Attempts are ongoing in the Southwestern United States to reintroduce the Mexican Wolf, the most genetically distinct type of gray wolf. Efforts have not met with the same success as the reintroduction of wolves in the greater Rockies. For updated USFWS Mexican wolf information, click here and here.
And for wonderful poetry, go see what Jama’s got cookin’ for the
Poetry Friday Roundup.