By S.J. Stover

In my dream they want to wash you, 
lather you up and rinse away  
all grit, all gravel gathered  
in the quick of your claws, 
brush the dust, the dirt  
from your fur, snip off 
the prickles, pluck the brambles  
tangled in the black of your belly,  
sweep the violets violently from your ears.  

But you— 
wolf-minded ever— 
slip their grip, dive tooth first 
into the woods’ waking whoop, 
your brain’s blue furnace  
alive, alight 
with the genius of your idea:  

to weld yourself to the world’s wild welter— 
to burrow, frog-mad, 
in morning’s muddy unending,  
cling deathless, tough as kudzu,  
to hours, minutes, days—  
a tick on the skin of time.  

Dew-footed you fly 
through thick and thistle,  
to chase the needle-eyed dawn— 
you the burr, life the fur. 

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S.J. Stover is a fiction writer and poet living in Boston. His writing has appeared in swamp pink and Salon magazine, and he has served as writer in residence at the Good Hart Artist Residency in Michigan. He earned his MFA from Hunter College.