Once they came down only at dark from the canyons. Now they trot out bold in daylight on sunlit pavement. Still, if you move close, they vanish fast

into shadows under the freeway, blocks from the ocean. Up beyond the flammable mansions on over- built lots, where they once burrowed

safe, gave birth to ravenous young. Now they watch under scaffolding swinging above sliding foundations. Near the homeless tarps, scattered

fires. Wolf instinct awakes in the once-wilderness. They’d feed at your jugular. You mean nothing to them, you who believed in the evolved domestic.

Hunger, not love, draws your dog. The need in the gut. Each choice made in your life sentimentalized. Like the young you fed first. Gone

too when you return with nothing but your worn advice on how to survive.

This poem appears in the December 2025 print edition.

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