Always a Girl and a Wolf

There were many of us
who witnessed when
the girl met the wolf.

All of us were
climbing
               up the trees,
foraging
               down by the roots,
resting
               in branches high enough to still hear
the drops of honey that fell from
each of the wolf’s words.

We knew of the wolf’s tricks,
from caring for flowers
right off the path
to memorizing the daily routes
of all the woodsmen.

We knew we should have
intervened in their meeting,
dropped

                acorn

                after

                                acorn

                                after

                                                acorn

                                                into her basket,

flown

                across the sky
               until the sun
               was shadowed out,

howled and growled

                

                behind trunks and stones,

anything to make her leave.

But we all found something
more important to focus on
that day in the forest,
so instead of speaking to her,
we spoke to ourselves.

Maybe this girl would be smarter
than the last few girls to trudge
down the path,

                or maybe she would be
               too prompt, too fast,
               too good a granddaughter
               to lollygag,

                                                or maybe she carried
                                               an axe in that basket,
                                               sticky from sweets but
                                               sharp enough to cut hide.

We told ourselves this
as we continued on in
this bucolic day in the woods,
because we’ve long since

accepted that a girl will
always meet a wolf
somewhere in this forest,

so we may as well
accept it as part
of the natural cycle
of the woods.