The Wolf Who Saw a Boy

There was a wolf

Who saw a boy

The wolf was standing

In the forest

And from afar

It spotted

A small boy

Playing

With a wooden airplane

Does a wolf know

What an airplane is?

It did not

But the wolf knew

What a boy was

And he ran back

To his pack

To tell them

That there was a boy

Nearby

When he got to the pack

His father was the first wolf he told

And he immediately

Jumped to action

The little wolf’s father

Was the Head of the Pack

And he told his fellow wolves

That his son had spotted

A man in the forest

Who looked scary

And frightening

The little wolf tried to remind his father

That he had not seen a man

But a boy

A young boy

And that yes, a man might be nearby

But he hadn’t seen a man

Or really, anything to be afraid of

That night, a meeting was held

That all the wolves attended

And at the meeting

One of the other elder wolves

In the pack

Said that something had to be done

About the ten men

Searching the forest

To capture a wolf

The little wolf was in bed

But he could hear

The other wolves talking

And he worried

That maybe he should have spoken up

When the other wolves

Started changing his story

When he woke up the next morning

All any wolf was talking about

Was the army of men

Making their way through the forest

To throw all the wolves

Into zoos and turn them into pets

By now, the little wolf

Has tried to howl the truth

To whoever would listen

But the story had taken on

A life of its own

And nobody wanted to hear

That there was only

One small boy in the forest

When there were hundreds of angry men

Coming to wage war

Against the wolf pack

The wolves gathered themselves

And made their way across the forest

And when they arrived at the spot

Where some wolf had said

They saw thousands of men

Planning to attack

All they found

Was a wood airplane

That a small boy

Had left behind

And wolves do not know

What a wooden airplane is

The wolves were very mad

That they had been mislead

The small wolf

Who had been following the pack

Tried to speak up

And say it was their own fault

Because they hadn’t listened

And they hadn’t worked hard enough

To hear the story over and over again

But instead had let it become

Something else entirely

When he tried to speak up

His mother pulled him aside

And told him

To stay silent for now

She told him

That he had done the right thing

By trying to tell his father

What he had saw

But that sometimes

Being a messenger

Means being the guardian

Of the truth

And that means howling it

Over and over again

Until it is heard

The way it should be

‘Does that mean I shouldn’t

Keep telling the truth,’

The little wolf

Asked his mother

‘No, my love,’ she told him,

‘It means you speak it louder

For there are those

Who will not want to hear it’

The wolves went back

To their part

Of the forest

And the small wolf

Worked on his howl

So that the next time

He saw something

He would be able

To howl it
As loud

As he could