Nations and nationalism;
Religion and re-legend

Grandmother killed the wolf, didn't she?

There is another, separate story
the retelling of an old legend
(all things important are lost in the retelling)

The man turns into a monster at the sight of a
full moon,
turns back again only when somebody loves him.

I think about that grandmother often,
sitting by the fire with a
rifle in her lap-

The things she's seen

The wolves she has left to ****

In the other story, the other legend,
It's the grandmother who loves the wolf
and turns him back

And I think that this one is truer, somehow

Because we are really all just fury things
with barred teeth
that need to be told to come back into the house
to eat the dinner on the table
to stop howling at the sky

all of it, give it all up, for the sake of somebody you love

and if that is not enough, at  least for the sake
of the old woman in the woods
who loved you before your bones were thought up

(hide the blood on your claws, little wolf/monster/thing,
she's just washed the sheets
and they're bright white
the color of the moon
the color of her eyes that were blind all along)