Wolves of War

Originally published April 17, 2022.

I dream my one grandmother’s dreams

of the Wolves of War

always, the Wolves of War,

and hunks of old bread, bullets, rape, and lost children.

I share my other grandmother’s insomnia

caused, in her case, by too many nights in bomb shelters comforting her two little kids while the city burned above her

triggered, in my case, by any bang in the night,

shaking hands from a popping balloon

I lose it, along with my dog, during 4th of July.

Trauma passed on, unwittingly, through generations

somehow landing in my marrow

my gift to receive, to hold, and to grow from.

Perpetrators and victims, who cares…

it’s a human who suffers, and their mother, lover, children

I can tell by one look at your pantry

of your grandmother’s desperate search for a hunk of bread

to feed her starving children, those that survived, as they ran from falling bombs.

The wolves of war? NO! I used to raise a wolf dog.

Wolves are better than this!

Only humans commit atrocities of war

Precisely when they lose their animal nature.

We call it “lose their humanity” and “turn into animals.”

But no! War is what it means to be human,

just as much as Mozart and Bob Marley and fancy tea cups.

History repeating itself, over and over and over…

Is it a circle?

Or a spiral?

And is the spiral going upward?

Or downward?

Ascending into Heaven and descending into Hell.

My heart aches from holding both truths.

I shall eat a salmonberry flower

Listen to the old cedar who knows best,

And be with my puppy in the here and now.