It is in a dark & gloomy canyon.
By the streaming lines of her hair we read
the maiden
landed from somewhere else
came down rather quickly in front of the Indian boy whose terror is clear:
his quickly halted steps
his desire. The moon
makes the most of the scene, the hint of wolf about her eyes & mouth. Is it
vampire as we know it? Werewolf
as in the Slavic hills? The landscape:
stone mesas, riding the sands, wind
in vast spaces, says other.
What forces play
that we call «Navaho witchcraft»?
The white wolf lady dances on the hills
on the edge of black mesas under the full moon stalks of yucca outlined on the sky.
I guess she sings, I guess her hunting song
is what we’re listening to.
The mesas turn to mountains, the yucca to ponderosa pine. They fall away
to high flat desert, bare except for sage & still she sings: she points her nose at the stars, she fills her throat she plants her feet; landscape behind her blurs like a moving scroll: the moon & she stand still.