On a winter day, I, without a sweater or coat,
Lost in the woods,
A wolf came and sat down next to me,
Offering his friendship, warmth and care.
Perhaps he offered his love, too.
Though I will never know.

It seemed he was the loving kind.
So thick was his coat
And so sweet his breath
That I could not smell death.
No foul odor of evil from his mouth,
Or body, or fur came to me.

Shivering, perhaps from cold,
Perhaps from a monstrous killer close,
My hands, feet, numb and blue,
The wolf weighed and wondered,
Then beckoned me to a small swale at the foot of a tree,
He reared and pushed me lightly to the ground.

Once down, he curled upon and around me,
His tail, though scrawny by measure to a fox,
curled on me, already warming from his body,
As a slight snow dusted us both.
I awoke, warm, new snow around.
Him licking the frost from my hands, my face,

Then striding to the edge of a copse,
Growling and circling,
Low, slow,
Til I rose and followed
His determined steps,
Warm and afraid.

My grandfather, my grandmother,
Father and mother,
Books and movies, too
Told me fear,
I will be bitten, eaten,
Consumed.

Fear them.
Wolves, they instructed,
Eat little Russian children,
And would eat ours had we not
Learned their ways,
Exterminated them.

I walked to school
Fearing the wolf
Behind drugstore, supermarket,
The barber,
A fatal leap, fangs, fearsome,
From a neighbor's yard.

The wolf would not eat me,
Worse, he'd maul me, gnaw me,
Leave me half dead,
Limbless, eviscerated,
Still breathing,
Pitiless waif bleeding out his last.

They did not tell me about
Cars or Alcohol,
Or the men and women who abuse them.
They did not tell me about
Perfidy and Lies
And the men and women who use them.

Wolves are convenient.