Third
My Sister and the Wolves
Kim Moore (Barrow-in-Furness, UK)
Liz Berry: I found myself returning again and again to this poem and it's delightfully odd, dark story which is very cleverly developed and sustained. It gets better and better as it goes on, until we reach that fantastic, wild final image. Bravo!
My Sister and the Wolves
It's been a year since my sister began
to live with wolves. Each night the sound
of their slow breathing fills her house
and in the morning they sing her awake.
All the wolves who live outside belong to her
and all the ones in houses or chained up
in yards and left to howl, all those roaming
the woods, all of these are her children.
She thinks of nothing but wolf. She is all
fields and long coats and hiking boots,
she is all concern at the mice in the shed,
nibbling away at the bags of wolf food,
but it is only wolves that make her heart ache.
She is all clanging gates and kennels
hosed down with water, she spends her life
on the phone to strangers, negotiating
wolf adoptions, convincing families
to take one wolf into their home,
but warning them that with every wolf,
they are also adopting the Moon
and the Night and the Dark, that all
of these things live in the heart
of every wolf she has met. My sister
has room for wolves that are dying,
she has room for wolves that have bitten
small children, she has room for wolves
that don't know their name, she has room
for wolves that are killers of things
like sheep and rabbits and pain.
She takes in wolves that piss
when somebody speaks, wolves
that have never seen a staircase,
wolves that have never walked
on a carpet, wolves whose owners
are bored or stupid or simply vanish.
She takes in wolves of all shapes and sizes
but she does not take in me.
I call to her but no sound I make
will still be made of words by the time
its crossed the distance between us.
She's moving further and further away.
Last night she was just a cut out on a hill,
the pack at her heels, the sky burning
and I knew she did not belong to me.
poem © Kim Moore