Wolf Pack
    after Socha

One night when I was twelve and alone in the
house, I rifled through my father's room. The moon
bloomed in his open window. I knew that this
was wrong, but I was simply bored, the evening
slow and long, and, well, I was newly twelve and
looking for nothing in particular, nothing on
my mind, when suddenly I came upon the
first "wolf pack" I'd ever seen: the whole
deck full of naked 1940s women. My eyes wide,
I riffled through the nudes. Outside the sky
brightened as the moon shone in. So not
what I would have expected of my father. In a
wheelchair all his life, he never showed a trace
of guilty pleasure. Who was this man I'd stripped of
love? Outside, the moon removed its blouse of cloud.

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Copyright © 2015 Ronald Wallace All rights reserved
from For Dear Life
University of Pittsburgh Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission