Tahane Recalls His Escape
An elderly gray wolf escaped from his northwest Florida preserve during Hurricane Michael and was later found and returned to his owner.
Sixteen years, I feared no hunter, howled
for the crowd. My handler held my gentled heart,
controlled food, drink, and nearly all I knew
or needed to of life — raised captive, rarely growled,
no inkling of what lay beyond my gate.
Human acclimated, staff would say of my pack,
how we were never wild yet modeled primal.
Nor was I an alpha, despite the myth, my fate
to have my day, my denouement, survive escape
and die of age, but that October, Michael hit,
the sky went black, wind shrieked, a great oak split
my fence, and I lunged into a broken landscape.
They said I fled of terror, but nature,
knowing what I couldn’t, set me free.
