The Wolf and the Rose

October 23, 2011 at 4:19 pm · Filed under Dark Side, Poems, Some truth to it ·Tagged author, Charles L. Mashburn, http://gooseberrygoespoetic.blogspot.com/, life, story, wolves, writer

Here’s another of my many “wolf” poems. I wrote a slew of them in the late nineties, and seems I keep finding more as I go through all my old files. As I’ve said before, I have always been fascinated by wolves; I find them to be an extremely romantic animal, and to me they epitomize the struggle of life.

I will be posting this poem on Gooseberry Garden’s Poetry Picnic. Their theme this week is Nature, Forests, Rivers and Mountains, and, though I don’t mention them all, I think this poem is on the right track for the prompt. I hope you enjoy it.

The Wolf and the Rose

 

Lone white wolf on the hillside

Gazing down, he stands silent and still

Hungry eyes scan the valley

Searching for this night’s kill

 

The moon still fast asleep

On the cold world’s other side

Snow shawl wraps the mountain

‘cross the valley, so deep and wide

 

Wolf moves as if by magic

Slips quietly down the hill

Belly empty and aching

Demanding to be filled

 

Eyes roaming as he travels

He blends with the blanket of snow

Nothing else moves, no sign of life

Not a bush or a flower grows

 

Alas, he grows weak then stumbles

Another step and then he goes down

A groaning last breath escapes him

The cold world hears not the sound

 

His body lies stiff and frozen

Until at last comes the spring

Tis in the summer they find him

‘neath a tree where songbirds sing

 

A thorny bush with one red blossom

Casts shade on the spot where he fell

The birds warble a song bittersweet

A story of life in the wild they tell

 

They sing not a song of his death

Of his dying, his struggles and woes

They sing about life lived hard, yet full

For the wolf that lies ‘neath the rose

 

Copyright © 1999 C.  Mashburn

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