My eyes scan the fields and ditches
Wary of movement

His eyes scan the roads
Wary of stillness

The broken and shorn stubble of wheat stalks weave through drifts of snow and ice
A grizzled growth upon sleeping Prairie lands
Dreaming of the plow
A memory of seeds and life
Of warm breezes and dust devils dancing through the heat
The snowmelt bares the moulds and remnants of last Autumn's harvest
The morning comes sooner, the sun rising earlier each day to whisper a promise of Spring

Eyes of amber, of honey, of wheat
Flickering golden
His tongue lolls over sharp teeth
As he crouches low in the brush

He waits
Breath a fog spiraling up
Like smoke wisps from a smudge
He gazes up
Sees the great cold beasts whip past
Their round black legs too fast to understand
The two-legs riding inside them
They used to ride horses
But these are no horses
These dead things
Without the two-legs inside them, they don't even breathe
Strange creatures
Not for eating

The cold horses are gone
It's only a few strides once he breaks cover
Across the hard snow
Up the bank
Across the stone river of the cold horses
Quickly now
Down the other side along a well-worn path
And into the fields where mice are found
But where the cold horses cannot run

His fur is grey as Winter sky
Each bristling hair alive
His connection through paw and pad to this living breathing Mother Earth
As vibrant and close as trees with their deep roots

He is the Land
In the shape of a dog
At the edge of the world of the two-legs
A creature alive between
The callous symmetry of the City
And the ebb and flow of the Wild

He calls to me in the dreaming hours
Inviting me home
When I am old
When my two legs fail
When my breath refuses to come
I will wither into the Land
And be reborn

This Little Wolf
This trickster

Title photo by Caleb Woods
https://unsplash.com/photos/BfeNzyi79W0