The poem I wrote for Paul Brookes’ challenge and wasn’t able to post.

Wolf,

where are you?
I know you’re there, lying low.
Not in these quiet meadows
and wooded slopes perhaps,
but along Garonne’s broad reaches
harried by flood waters,
where farm buildings sink beneath the weight of ivy,
wooden planking falls like flakes of slate.

Wolf, where are you?
Down there amid the forest-tangle,
the woodland left untended,
plantations abandoned?
Where sounders of boar roam uncontested?
Where deer multiply undisturbed?

The hunters know, and they won’t tell,
won’t give you away,
they want your souls for their private tally.

I would know, would love to find a sign,
not to pry, your paths are your own,
to put your secret beneath protecting wings,

so, wolf, if you roam among these tangled trees
If you slip from shade to shade along the wild paths,
you may roam in silent…