Wild Wolves Caught in Curious Crosswinds.

“I fear that these poor lost dogs may be the shadow of a future journey if we don’t watch out.”
Richard Brautigan, “The View from the Dog Tower” 1963.


I sat across from her at some stateline diner near Jamestown New York by way of Ithaca while traveling to Cleveland sometime in March a few years back. We were exhausted from our rumored higher education and the snowfall had gotten worse.
Our waitress had a glass eye and a wobbled waist as though she had been there far too long after closing time if you catch my drift.
We ordered a black and white milkshake and a couple of coffees.
We hadn’t really spoke too much on the drive as we had intended or rather, anticipated to make the trek go by faster as conversation tends to do when you are in a car traveling a long distance.
We listened to whatever music we were listening to at that time, undoubtedly some hippie shit or it could have been the Pixies but I can’t remember because it’s not worth considering to recall right now.
I just kept thinking about this dream I had earlier that morning.
It was still in my head from the time we left Ithaca, which was several hours ago, but then again, this isn’t unusual.
It involved a wolf.

I saw my life as a wolf dashing along the road
and I questioned the woman of that approximate place in that road we just passed.

Some regard the wolf as immortal, they said.
Now you know this has only knowingly occurred in one case and that
wolves die regularly of various causes –

bears kill them, men hunt them,
they get epilepsy,
they get a salmon bone crosswise in their throat,

they run themselves to death no one knows why –
but perhaps you never heard
of their ear trouble.

They have good ears,
they can hear a cloud pass overhead.
And sometimes it happens
that a windblown seed will bury itself in the aural canal
displacing equilibrium.
They go mad trying to stand upright,

nothing to connect to.
They die of anger.
Only one we know learned to go along with it.

He took small steps at first.
Using the gentle wind of New Mexico.
The woman at the bar couldn’t remember what they called him.

Things are as hard as you make them.