after Ruth Stone
Scientists . . . discovered the first reproductive female wolverine and her two offspring (called
kits) in Mount Rainier National Park in over one hundred years. nps.gov
Fletcher is long and lean with high cheekbones
and at one time a ponytail, now shorn.
He prints his own designs on shirts to sell
at the local market. His father Josh
looks on. I bought his wolverine, printed
in brown, black and beige on a navy shirt.
It brought to mind a story I once taught
in the 1980s to sophomores
about a wily wolverine. Fletcher’s
captured it. Short snout and playful, light-flecked
eyes. Sly, shy, stronger than a wolf, it’s said
and prized for its soft, resilient coat. And rare.
Each bears a unique blaze on its chest pelt.
Scientists can track them on camera.
Wolverine are of particular concern
due to their sensitivity to climate change.
Their gait is serpentine, four prints line up
in sibilant sets on tundra. The mother’s
two kits in pictures frolic in the snow,
climb trees. It took one hundred years for them
to come back to Rainier’s snowy preserved
lands in the Gifford Pinchot Forest. One
million three hundred eleven thousand
acres protected since 1897.
How long until the cutting starts,
relative of the glutton; lonely patriarch?
Subhaga Crystal Bacon (they/them) is a Queer elder living in rural Washington on unceded Methow land. They are the author of four full length collections of poetry including A Brief History of My Sex Life, forthcoming from Lily Poetry Review Books in 2026; the Lambda Literary Award finalist Transitory, from BOA Editions, 2023;and the chapbook, Surrender of Water in Hidden Places, Red Flag Poetry, 2023, re-released in an extended edition in the summer of 2024. www.subhagacrystalbacon.com