wilderness by carl sandburg

There is a wolf in me . . . fangs pointed for tearing gashes . . . a red tongue
for raw meat . . . and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this wolf because
the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.    

There is a fox in me . . . a silver-gray fox . . . I sniff and guess . . . I pick
things out of the wind and air . . . I nose in the dark night and take
sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers . . . I circle and loop and
double-cross.

There is a hog in me . . . a snout and a belly . . . a machinery for eating and
grunting . . . a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the sun—I got this too
from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fish in me . . . I know I came from salt-blue water-gates . . . I scurried with shoals of herring . . . I
blew waterspouts with porpoises . . .
before land was . . . before the water went down . . . before Noah . . .
before the first chapter of Genesis.

There is a baboon in me . . . clambering-clawed . . . dog-faced . . . yawping a
galoot’s hunger . . . hairy under the armpits . . . here are the hawk-eyed
hankering men . . . here are the blonde and blue-eyed women . . . here
they hide curled asleep waiting . . . ready to snarl and kill . . . ready to sing
and give milk . . . waiting—I keep the baboon because the wilderness says
so.

There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird . . . and the eagle flies among the
Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what
I want . . . and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the
dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope,
gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes—
And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness.

O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under
my red-valve heart—and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a
woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-
Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where—For I am the keeper of
the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work:
I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.

(C) Carl Sandburg

• What wild creatures reside in you? Begin a poem with the words, “There is a [blank] in me?

• We comprise multitudes, as Walt Whitman said. What is it to contain both a self-aware “civilized self” and a “wild self.” How does this tension feel in your body? When do you feel most alive? What is it to walk the wild edge between domesticity and wildness? Explore in your journal.

• What aspect of wildness in you is crying out for attention right now? Is it the eagle, the hare, the antelope? Write a character sketch of the being and then reflect: What qualities does it possess that I need in my life right now?