The Aardwolf

By Maxy S

I was thrown like a baby in a

bindle from the skate park’s stoop

So I rolled down the out-of-state

park’s steps and sung on its

stumps

Stumping a ranger who took me

for, then warned me of danger

She looked a peck drunk from the

Quebecois weather watch,

Ever-long day of sleety, needy

state park wrecks

I stood my ground, singing and

scatting under the buck moon

For nothing but buck scat, the

parkway morose and marooned

Ruining a silence, the warden

warned me of, then let it be hours

She let me keep my dark and

sweet isolation in Pointe-Taillon

Evergreens rustle from her

muscle car on tarmac

But one last trembling threat she

gave

One savage and rabid and ancient

and grave Not of the forest’s frostbites or

tickbitten pitfalls

Or brambling pathways or

blindspotted streetlights or bear traps or lost maps or dead-zone phone calls

But of a towering man who

tramples and tears

to the rambling brook to bathe

in the bare

dead light of the moon, a loner, a

lunatic,

a veritable were-beast, as it were,

a feral, barely-human lunar

fugitive

But his form through the fronds

was more like… five nine

I found kindling to warm him, we

had a fine time

Crooning to an old guitar, we were

both far from home

He was not arctic nor gray, no

carnivorous canine

The werewolf: an aardwolf with a

taste for just termites