& at risk of being

                                    other                entirely & exposed 

as an animal confined to open arid stores (this West 

this continent) is it coyotes in earliest historical records 

or wolves written by local priests who called them  

less than daring – & speaking of howls & concealments scant seen  

yet noted by French traders in the territory called Mni Sóta Makoce 

(by the Dakota meaning land where the waters  

reflect the sky) there be bands of ten or twelve of these burrowing  

dogs              somewhere between fox & wolf             inhabitants  

of open prairies at some pass or place much frequented by game 

assembling as pack & truss – unable to singly take down a deer  

or a goat – oh the eyes oh piercing-sea green (the rarest 

found always in every pup) or the pink gray 

of my blue vein coloring from the dun & silver  

pool: I could be would be this creature come as still water  

as a northern lake at dawn     rippleless      as below-zero smoke floats  

straight up in the bluest blue limerence of childhood  

in a cottage & backhoes & earthmovers roil the blackest plains 

soil of farmland excised for rehabilitation – for modern suburban low-

lying bungalows’ big backyards & swing sets – 

as gales buffet the doors & windows shudder as I think of a mammal  

nicknamed prairie wolf couched contentedly in some badger’s  

former foxhole teased & pestered regardless of smallish  

boulders & broken slate slabs          today         there they stay  

in residence under our floorboards & we – under their consequence 

despite how much smarter we’re supposed to be & that single 

row of trees purposefully planted at the fringe of the slough 

Side-to-side – attenuate perfects resistance in empyrean squall