{"sf1_id":1851922,"sf2_id":"P1EvQzeY","title":"The Homecoming of Daniel Usherswell","author":"Rob MacWolf","words":1290,"posted_at":"2022-05-09T17:02:00.000Z","tags":["Dactylic Hexameter","Gay","M/M","Poetry","Voice of dog","Werewolf","pride"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1851922-the-homecoming-of-daniel-usherswell","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/P1EvQzeY","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/d1/f4/d1f49eda-4d00-4be8-9043-a5a66b0dcdb7","description":"#51 of poetry\n\nWritten for the Voice of Dog's Pride Month, and because  khakidoggy wanted to try a reading of something with this meter. You can listen to his reading here:https://www.thevoice.dog/episode/the-homecoming-of-daniel-usherswell-by-rob-macwolf\nAnd yes, this is the same pack as I've written about before. I guess that means you know Dan's last name now. While I don't think it's needed to enjoy this poem, if you WANT to read more about a gay polyam werewolf biker gang, and on this site there's a chance you do, you can do that here:https://www.sofurry.com/view/1695958\nand here:https://www.sofurry.com/view/1774966","content":"The town of Good Intentions was respectable and quiet,  \nAs\u0026nbsp;respectable and quiet as many towns that languish  \nIn the once remarkable, but no more remarked, rolling grasslands.  \nThe roads that once led out from it lay still and sullen silent,  \nFor few indeed had reason, now, to visit Good Intentions,  \nAnd many who departed it did so without returning.  \nIt was indeed proverbial, that roads from Good Intentions  \nLed not to anywhere that one returned from. In the morning  \nThe elders of the town (there were not many) met for coffee  \nAnd talked of how the younger generations were not staying.  \nAt sunset the lone stoplight, on the crossroads at town center,  \nThe lone and only stoplight in all Minnehacqua County,  \nCeased changing red and green, instead showed only flashing yellow.  \nAnd you could be forgiven, if you looked on, tourist-curious,  \nFor judging that the days when things might happen were behind it,  \nBefore you went your way again, down any dusty highway  \nFrom the town of Good Intentions, in the endless dusty grasslands.\n\nBut intentions, good or otherwise, to providence are nothing,  \nTo chance or fate or providence or whatever you call it.  \nAnd any day may be the day that anything might happen.  \nAnd when it finally happens, well, it has to happen somewhere.  \nSo came the fearsome morning, on the town of Good Intentions,  \nOne cold-front threatening day in June, while yet the moon was waxing,  \nThat brought the Pack upon them, like a storm across the grasslands.\n\nOh the Pack came down the highway, with a thunder in their engines  \nWith the thunder in their engines and the wind beside them racing,  \nWith the wind like flowing water over bare arms and bare torsos,  \nWith a growling in their throats not to be heard above their engines.  \nWhat a fear was on the townsfolk, for they knew (by reputation,)  \nWhat the Pack could surely do, if but their anger was awakened,  \nIf their anger or their hunger once awakened, stretched its muscles,  \nAnd shook its shaggy head, and yawned displaying wicked canines,  \nAnd leapt a wolven leap out of the bed where it had slumbered,  \nThe bed shaped like a human, where lately it had slumbered  \nWhile the human was its dream and its illusion. Thus the townsfolk,  \nDid shut the doors and shut the blinds and peer between the curtains.  \nAs thundering down the highway, the wind beside them singing,  \nThe Pack in grim procession came, on unthinkable business.\n\nThe foremost was a terror. He came on in faded leather,  \nIn leather greyed and grizzled with how many hundred highways.  \nIn the stubble on his cheek and in the mane above his temples  \nOne could read the very color of the pelt he wore within him,  \nOf the pelt wicked and wolfish, grey and grizzled as the roadside.  \nHe led them down the highway, to the square before the courthouse,  \nOnto the square of cobbles, with his eager pack around him,  \nWhere motor vehicles were all forbidden. And he howled there,  \n\"So where is it we're going? Tell us pup, and tell us swiftly,  \nFor this human town dismays me, and I would be in the forest,  \nA-running free and fearless with all human things discarded.  \nThe sooner we are done,\" he said, \"the sooner we can be there.\"\n\n\"I think,\" said one beside him, not much younger, though he looked it,  \nA touch of dog admixtured with the wolf he bore within him,  \n\"That once I skinned my knees there in that playground, by the library.  \nThat once I stole some candy from that store, now long since shuttered.  \nThat once I waited, sick at heart, just there beneath that elm tree,  \nTo catch the bus that leaves the lonely town of Good Intentions  \nAnd never does come back.\" The wolves beside him revved their engines  \nUntil their grizzled leader with a growl calmed them to silence,\u0026nbsp;  \nAnd with a rough caress encouraged once again the telling,  \n\"It was this way, I know, I think, I think that I remember.  \nA left just past the vacant lot where used to be a diner,  \nAnother left before the Methodist First Congregation,  \nAnd then a right when you get to the crossroads at the cornfields!\"  \nHe kicked his bike awake. He took position. And he lead them  \nAs does the wolf who catches first the scent upon the snowbank  \nCharge on in joyous hunger with the baying pack behind him.\n\nBefore a humble ranch house, just outside the city limits,  \nThe Pack came to a halt. They stalled their bikes and stopped their motors.  \nThey huddled round their youngest, all concern, and masks abandoned,  \nEach plainly and defiantly in wolven shape they kissed him,  \nThe grizzled leader caught him tightly, tightly did he hold him.  \nAnd then he turned. He left them in the gravel driveway waiting.  \nHe passed the rusted mailbox, that he once himself had painted.  \nHe mounted the worn porch steps, where once he watched the fireflies.  \nHe pressed, and heard again, a decades-long familiar doorbell  \nThree times before the deadbolt on the door drew back. A woman  \nToo old to not be old stood there in fear beyond the threshold.  \nBut only for a moment. For the wolf before her shifted  \nTo face like hers in more than fear. She gasped. She called him \"Daniel?\"\n\nSome privacy we'll give them. Ere this meeting can be happy  \nMuch sorrow must be spoken, and much reconciliation,  \nThey each must make assurances, repeated, to the other  \nThat despite all appearances, they yet are not a monster.  \nBut soon enough he entered, and she welcomed all his brothers,  \nAnd soon enough reunion was more sweet, and much less bitter,  \nAnd Wonderbread was broken, for a chicken salad sandwich  \nSupper, and the coffee maker purred upon the counter.  \nAnd tales he came to telling, of the pack he'd found to love him,  \nOf home they'd made eachother in the forest of the northlands,  \nOf pride and polyamory, of blue moon and bereavement,  \nOf how the wolf had to come to each, to turn and re-beget them.  \nSo ere the sun was set she said she understood. She told him  \nThat he would yet be welcome, while she lived, in Good Intentions,  \nAnd all his pack as well. And if a word was said gainst werewolves,  \nWhy, she would have a piece of mind to give to those who said it.\n\nThey left her in the morning, with promises of letters.  \nThey roared under the sunrise swift away, though not forever.  \nFor any day might be the day that providence and highway  \nCould bring him back, with all his pack, to visit with his mother.  \nNow of course, opinions differ, in Minnehacqua County,  \nOn who it was was visited upon them in reunion  \nOne cold-front haunted day in June, while yet the moon was waxing:  \nSome say they were a biker gang, and nothing more, whom rumor  \nInflated has to lycanthropic tall tale in the telling.  \nSome say that they were fugitives, who, sympathy beseeching,  \nPretended to relation and to prodigal connections.  \nSome think they were conspiracy, though 'how' escapes their notions.  \nSome think them merely metaphor. For something else entirely.  \nBut I, who claim some kinship with a wolf or two, can tell you  \nThat the town of Good Intentions, nowadays, is not as quiet  \nAs when it fell forgotten, hid between the rolling hilltops.  \nThere you might hear, some evening, underneath the only stoplight  \nThe thunder in an engine, echoing across the grasslands,  \nAnd far-off howl, yet bittersweet in territorial triumph  \nAs if some distant wolf once claimed this place as home and heartland,  \nAnd though he dwelleth here no more, yet still does he remember.\n\n  \n  \n\n","series":{"name":"poetry","previous":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1838529-my-heart-is-full-of-thunder.json","next":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1864546-blank-verse-essay-on-the-haunting-of-america.json"}}