The Name
    I woke one moonlit night to the sound of a cry
    That from a thousand throats seemed to fly.
    I ran to the window and stared out, blinking,
    My heart wonder-lifting and fear-sinking.

    The window no longer looked on the world I knew,
    But on a world beneath a sky of midnight blue,
    Where sparkled stars that it seemed I should know,
    And a full moon as radiantly white as the snow.

    Beneath the stars and the moon there sloped a hill,
    Whose like I think I have never seen, nor ever will.
    A long, unbroken sweep of grass silvery with light,
    It shone with life and health even at night.

    The hill broke to a forest at some distance past,
    But my eyes would not move from the nearer grass.
    Arrayed in a circle there stood a shining ring
    Of wolves with their heads uplifted to sing.

    Their hides were bathed with starlight pale,
    And they filled the night with a melodic wail.
    Their eyes, slitted almost to vanishing, glinted gold,
    Glinted with a wisdom as fair as it was old.

    Five score of wolves, a hundred at least,
    Stood calling in voices that no earthly beast
    Has ever wielded, with notes no beast has uttered-
    Or, even, no man has sung from our world cluttered.

    My hands clenched on the sill; with tears in my eyes
    I stood waiting; beyond the wood they awoke a sunrise.
    Suddenly the moon was gone, in a flood of gleaming
    Light that bore at most a hint of true dawn's seeming.

    For the light was brighter than any I had seen.
    It lit the grass as an emerald, heart-stopping green.
    The wolves flashed in the sunrise, softened to gray.
    Their voices sounded softer as well in the day.

    The enchantment of the dawn did not end there.
    In every direction it spread, radiantly fair.
    Hyacinth, saffron, scarlet, and turquoise,
    Clouds and light, backed by a chorus of wolf-voice.

    The forest blazed under the light as well,
    The breeze ringing the fine leaves like a bell.
    Every leaf trembled, in outline sharp and fair,
    As if it were leaving a hole when it moved in the air.

    The wolves broke then, broke from their ring,
    And across the grass wheeled, some still a-sing,
    Just as some, with their coats still aflame,
    Paused before vanishing to call out a name.

    A name as wordless as wonder, as soft as a drum,
    As bright as a star or a dream yet to come.
    They left the name lying in the light like a crown,
    And then faded into the wood from the down.

    My breath came faster when the wood and the hill
    Did not fade, but in the light posed, still.
    The wind brought a hint of flowers to my face, 
    And somewhere in the wood the wolves belled the chase.

    I sensed the moon and the stars watching me,
    For all the world as if they were curious to see
    What I would do, if I would go down through the door,
    And out into, or from, a world I might never see more.

    I stretched out a hand, and took a breath of the air
    That washed my lungs in a moment free from care.
    I felt my eyes tear, and I thought I made a choice,
    Said no to the sunrise, no to the wolf-voice.

    But the next thing I knew I stood on the grass,
    Among the beads of gleaming dew like beads of glass.
    The name lingered and rippled in the air all about me,
    In the wind through the clouds, in the bark of a tree.

    I took a deep breath, and felt the air flood me,
    Transforming and dazzling, allowing me to see
    Something that I never realized I knew not before.
    I looked at the woods that opened ahead like a door.

    I reached out and pulled the name from the sky,
    Took to myself a name forged of sunlight and wolf-cry.
    Then I moved forward and passed under stars' eyes,
    Seeking the place from which came the sunrise.