The Wolf We Feed (freebie for July crowdfunding Creative Jam)

[alexconall]

they say there are two wolves
in each of us
one made of all the vicious things
one made of all the virtues

which wolf wins?
the one I feed

but anger is a thing of vicious wolf
"God grant me the serenity"—
it is not courage that changes things
that can, that must be changed
it is anger

virtuous wolf takes no offense where none is meant
which values intent of speaker
over pain
of those hurt by careless words

if I starve the virtuous wolf
indeed I will become
a hateful thing
a hate-full thing

but if instead
I starve the vicious wolf
I will not be good
just sanctimonious

and how to call someone 'good'
who would deny a helpless animal
its only source of food

I feed both wolves
which wolf wins?
why must there be a winner?



The Wolf We Feed by Alex Conall is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.


(the history of the two-wolves story and the version used as reference for this poem)

Comments

Wow!

[ysabetwordsmith]

Duuuuuuude. Shades of "The Enemy Within" from Star Trek. This was brilliantly done!

Re: Wow!

[alexconall]

Glad you enjoyed!

I like the poem

[dialecticdreamer]

I'm still left thinking about the wolves, feeding on the things we /see/ and /hear/ as much as the things we think or do. I think it puts yet another spin on the idea.

Your version is definitely, memorably, different. Thanks for posting it.

Re: I like the poem

[alexconall]

Yes, they would feed on our sensory input as well as our thoughts and actions, wouldn't they? And sensory input is harder to control...

Glad you enjoyed!