Today there was a big white wolf
and a camraderie of cold noses.

He stood tall, fiercely white,
infinitely curious and utterly alert,
in a field of ice rendered blue by the moonlight.
At one point, he pressed his nose to mine
and then sniffed my left cheek
as though testing the substance of me.
Then, once he was sure of me, we ran together.

He led me through fields of icy blue
across mountains and boulders and
the reckless landscape.
we rolled around on the blue earth
and he rested on my chest with his
nose against my chin.
(And for a moment there was a memory
of a softer, fluffier dog who liked
to lie on my chest and wake me
by pressing his nose to my chin.)

Through this harsh realm we ran, finally reaching
where many others had gathered.
Maybe we were a kind of tribe, an ancient family
that ran with wolves in blue ice and
sometimes met for a while to
sit around orange flames, sing songs
about sunsets and tell stories about
long forgotten things.

For a while we were all together, and then,
one by one, they all disappeared,
until all that was left was him and me,
alone, together, in our patch of
the collective unconscious.