Explain: Wolves by Joe Wilkins

I have to admit it: I am a Joe Wilkins fanboy. My first exposure to Wilkins was in The Sun where his wonderfully beautiful essay, You, All of You, appeared. I've loved his writing since then and whenever I see something published by Wilkins I just have to devour it. So, I knew I would be blogging about this newest poem from Wilkins that just got published today on the Linebreak website. This poem is also interesting from the standpoint of the other things I have been reading. There has been a lot of wolves in my read as of late. Anyway, on to the poem.
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JOE WILKINS

Explain: Wolves

OR-7, also known as Journey, is the first confirmed wolf in western Oregon since 1947, and the first in California since 1924. Since the wolf left his pack in September 2011, he has wandered more than 1,000 miles […] through Oregon and Northern California.
–Wikipedia

The wandering wolf OR-7 appears to have a mate.
–The Oregonian, May 12, 2014

She wanders heavy-bellied, full of milk & knives.

Lowers the barrel of her body like this, forepaws soft & sure as motherwings against the infant earth.

When finally she takes flight, she falls to gnashing the neckmeat of deer, one last upwelling of arterial blood the very blush of certain bodies in the near heavens.

When mountains gather their snap & shatter, when down comes the wind & winterlong, even wolfbones leak their autumn grease, wolfeyes go lonesome & sallow, & for warmth every wolf snouts the yeasting fleshpockets of those they run with & love.

I’m telling you capped & nightgowned like that the story is not the wolf’s but ours, our fear not of being devoured but blinded, lied to, made complicit in our own undoing.

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The images in the poem are strange and beautiful.

• "She wanders heavy-bellied, full of milk & knives." The odd part of this image is the knives. Her belly is full of a wolf pup(s), but metaphorically Wilkins is calling the pups knives. These unborn pups will grow up to become wolves: dangerous animals. Knives helps us to see the wolf pup's potential.
• "When mountains gather their snap & shatter, when down comes the wind & winterlong, even / wolfbones leak their autumn grease." When I was listening to the reading of this poem that phrase, "wolfbones leak their autumn grease," made me stop in shock. What an interesting image. When winter comes even the wolves lose some of themselves, in the struggle to stay alive during those tough months.

Then the poem has it's poetic turn, in the fifth stanza. "I'm telling you capped & nightgowned like that the story is not the wolf's but ours, our fear not of / being devoured but blinded, lied to, made complicit in our own undoing." Yes this poem is about wolves, but it is also about that animalistic nature inside each of us. We are the wolves.

Joe Wilkins does it again people!