Poems by Robert Thomas

Wolf picture

Robert Thomas was born and grew up in Oakland, California, and has lived all his life in the San Francisco Bay Area. His poems have appeared in Agni, The Antioch Review, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, Shenandoah, and other journals. His manuscript Plush Fire has been a finalist in the National Poetry Series and other competitions but is still seeking a publisher. A graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz, he works as a legal secretary and lives in South San Francisco.

Wolf picture

WOLF POINT

I hear the crunch of green spikes
as I walk through the fog, the whole field
covered with ice plant at Wolf Point.
The raucous welter of the ocean
sounds like a helicopter through the mist
churning up a galaxy of salt and foam.
I can't hear you. I didn't know
it would be this cold. Black skimmers
are gliding over the water, I know it,
their red bills scooping up herring
all night long. A hundred years ago a timber wolf
minding his own business surprised a man here
minding his. He had that look of a thing
that's never gotten over being born,
come straight out of nowhere, or the sea,
eyes with the faint pink sheen of the dearest pearls.
The moon melted on his tongue like a gob of fat
as the fire burned, and when he'd had his fill of it
he turned back to his rift in the black quartz
and was swallowed whole. The man clawed the embers.
Where are you? Did you stay back in the meadow,
nothing but crushed grass and the scent of rosemary,
whose name means sea dew, pervading the green rivage?
I can't believe it. With your all-purpose curse
kept so close to your lips night and day, night and day,
and the brazen shoes you'd wear even to the cusp of sunrise,
red heels struck on rock as a dare.
The way you toyed with the white fruit
of the wolfberry, wondering if it was poison. Well,
it's not. I know you: a cypress on the point,
its branches wrenched open by the wind,
and tiny needles fused in clumps dense as shrapnel
in a grenade, ready to explode its own body
just to take with it the vile, ravishing dawn.

© Robert Thomas, 1996
Poem originally appeared in Seneca Review.

Two more of my poems.

THE TWO MUSES

FAST ANGEL

Valley of Saying Home Page

Email me at rwt@landels.com

Wolf Howl photo by Rick McIntyre, © 1994, Voyageur Press
Wolf in Autumn Leaves photo by Bruce Montagne, © 1994, Voyageur Press
Page composed by Diane Kirsten-Martin
Poems © Robert W. Thomas 1996