Meeting of the pack, Or, Wolves return to the Canyonlands | Christopher Ketcham

Brothers, sisters, meet at last
There is drink and drums
There is a god among wolves
Speech from leaping lungs
Oh brothers, sisters, I have longed for you
When I lay alone in the high mountains
In the desert, on the rivers
I have longed for your company
Your touch, your wisdom, your fool
Laughter, your kindness – oh tribe and pack!
What have we done with our time
Alone in the darkness? What have we done
In those long winter nights?
What light shone except the remembrance
Of the pack?
For we have walked the earth
And seen our aloneness in the autumn shadows
Our pack blown to pieces
Felt no hand on our shoulder
No friend in that cold plain
Our tin cups full of drink but no drunkenness
Our food without joy
Our mirrors looking back at us
Saying, Who this?
Our alarm clocks, our children’s socks
Our imbecile jobs, our bank accounts
Our checks that bounce
Our lies for marriages, mortgages, rents
Our music against a wind
That drowns till nothing but wind and dust
Our feet unable to move
Our wisdom with no one to hear
Our words trivial, like pebbles
Downstream in the river
Our muscles growing weak
Our eyes dim
In the light of aloneness.
Brothers, sisters, meet at last!
I love you! I’m mad for you
Like a man for oxygen come up from the waves
Nearly drowned
Like a sun that hasn’t smiled on the earth
After a year of rain
Like a child returned to parents
Who were held in chains
Like a fiend at a coke snort
Like the belly of a starved creature
Given a straight dinner
Like a full moon seen at last
When I’d only known the rational sun.