Gray Wolf Elegy by Brittney Corrigan


     for OR-93

 

 

Your long walk
                                         the light
                                                                     that rose

mountains          trees

                                         slice of road

your pack left behind
swift journey south

                                         how borders

were not yours

                                         imperiled traveler

we tracked and glimpsed

                  your search                        no companion for miles

                               the coastline

fog of ancestors                     wolf-ghosts         on moonlit wind

                 quiet collar      your lupine neck

dispersal             the wild roam

                                                                       the strike

bruise and bone             tissue trauma

         carcass on the frontage road

                                                                                  witness

lost & found                    your last breath

 

           far from blood-kin                                     wandering spirit

sighting                                           home

Brittney Corrigan is the author of the poetry collections Daughters, Breaking, Navigation, 40 Weeks and most recently, Solastalgia, a collection of poems about climate change, extinction, and the Anthropocene Age (JackLeg Press, 2023). Brittney was raised in Colorado and has lived in Portland, Oregon for the past three decades, where she is an alumna and employee of Reed College. She is currently at work on her first short story collection. For more information, visit http://brittneycorrigan.com/.