The Wolf at Prayer

Barefoot Through the Snow

My father taught me how to pray. He wasn't a particularly religious man, but he wasn't ashamed to tear his heart out and offer it to the sky. He was generally up for anything so long as it didn't hurt anyone other than himself.

"Like this," he said, when I asked him what he thought about prayer. He leaned his head back, baring his throat to god and sky in the most elemental and primary gesture of submission a pack predator knows, and howled wolf. "Ah-woooooooooolf!"

It wasn't much at first, rough and ragged, but he kind of yodeled through the Tarzan spectrum until he found his sweet spot. Something crystallized in the air and our hearts synched with the winking stars in charge of the the bare trees above our camp that night. 

We awoke next morning to rain on our face. But the tarp held and the coffee was good.
(c) Robin Morrison