Wild After Life

What a human sound a dog’s bark is—

Not the bark itself—the fact of dog

Barks in the middle distance, the sound

Of villages for thousands of years

And across multiple continents.

People and their companion species—

What a strange development at first—

The mobile camps of hunters, barking

With their new-found allies, probably

Self-domesticated wolves. Language

And mind have a lot to answer for,

You muse in late-winter wayside snow,

Listening to some distant barking

Floating over deer-haunted mesas,

Still home to coyotes but emptied

Of wolves. Even people were wild once,

Before words like wild rose to tame you.

We apologize. We’re wild for life.