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This is the path the bold once headed,
west to make the best of a life
rife with uncertainty.
Instead of hunter's wife,
I'd surely become a nurse,
a medicine woman with wolfskin
purse, or a teacher who
converses in all the tongues
of the wind.
I know just thinking thoughts
like these is sin.
Kinfolk taught me to mind
my elders and follow
in their ways.
Ignoring folk wisdom results
in untold days of tribulation.
Going this way, I'd be fooled
into seeing what wasn't there –
a grandmother in a hairy beast –
and be given to hold the ghost of a wildflower
bouquet in my arms,
as I would the baby I cannot bear,
barren this winter,
and last and the one before,
my belly sewn full of rocks.
If this wood world we inhabit
be a dream, then let it end
so a new dream can assure
another winter, with snow so blue,
so fine, the pines will wear capes
of it like outstretched storks' wings.
The air will ring and ring and ring
with white bells
and the belly of every bride
will rise high, a moon for each
wolf who nightly cries out
to the punishing sky
in brazen voice echoing
fate's unsated hungers.
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