I told my mother at the age of five
"If your boyfriend Frankie
Doesn't stop hurting me
I'm going to live with the wolves"
"Well" she said
"Go then, live with wolves"

So I left the kitchen and walked
through the garage and out of the side
door across the rock lawn
and across the street into the desert
Where coyotes lived
One hundred and eighty yards away in measure
But really about ten or eleven properties

I was so mad at being hurt
and no one to protect me

My friends came charging to greet me
about halfway from their den
And they surrounded me
And nipped at me
Two or three of them at a time
And the nips hurt but,
They were not a hurt of pain
I swear
and without imagination

These were bites of love
And the more they would bite me
The more I could feel their love
A love of warmth and tenderness
A caring love
A love which knows no boundaries
So warm the love of the desert wolves

Not of something colder
that would invite strangers into
their home to harm their own

Flesh and blood and bones
They, the yote, so starved
for affection
the somber song they sing of morn
and of moonlight
and the tides
both ebb and flow

Their love, they shared with me
A warmth that none can match
The messenger between maker
and mankind
will never understand nor listen

Paper walls and the wails of wolves
Both whisper in the winds

I have love
It was gifted to me