Resurgam II - Howling
Vintage 1940s furniture label, Middlesbrough
Our urban wolf
is howling
from rooftops,
balconies and open windows.
She is trapped,
hemmed in,
ringed, caged,
hunted and afraid.
Our urban wolf
is pacing
up and down hallways,
dusting the furniture
with lick and spit,
howling in stairwells,
scratching at doorways
to be let out.
Our urban wolf
is remembering
a time when her cousins
ran in packs
through deep forest
before all the trees
were chopped to make
flat packed furniture
or ships to defeat an armada.
Now we stand facing
a new armada,
nature’s own.
A fleet so fleet footed
that it can out run
even the fastest wolf
on the chase.
In her howling,
maybe our wolf
will begin to remember
the wisdom of her wild cousins
the ones who are left,
to listen to the alpha,
the mother of the pack,
for she is the glue that binds.
Maybe as our pacing slows
we will remember the bonds
which are important:
how to nurture and care
for our sick and injured,
how we transfer knowledge
to our young,
how we play together,
how we mourn together,
how to grieve our loss
in our enforced self-solitude.
In our howling,
maybe we will remember
we belong to something greater,
that our connectivity relies on love,
and on an old collective wisdom
of our wolf pack elders.
Listen to their stories,
for there are many to be told.
My nana speaks in the 1970s:
Family life is the most grateful thing.
The most precious thing in life
is for family to keep together.
The world is the same
as it’s always been
down through the ages,
wars, good and bad
then it seems to turn over
and restart again.
I fully believe one day
there will be a nuclear war,
there will be survivors,
they will be thankful to be alive
and they will start the world again.
The world is so beautiful that it never dies.
The world doesn’t die,
it is the people in it that die,
the generations.
The main thing is
to keep the family life together
Family means something,
especially when you are old
and you haven’t got anybody.
There is more loneliness in this world
than there is of wealth.
You hear of dear old people
not seeing anybody for days
because people are not so friendly
like they used to be.
My nana, Ida Marion Groom, grew up in Devonport, survived two world wars and the swine flu epidemic during WW1. Here you can listen to her describing that experience. She was a great storyteller.
The Woolf furniture label was a piece I found in Middlesbrough, where my husband’s nana, Elenora, lived during WW2. She was Italian, born in Scotland, and married a Middlesbrough Yorkshireman. He was killed fighting in Italy, in the Trasimene Line, leaving her a widow, with two young children to bring up. She often faced discrimination, had her windows smashed, because she was of Italian heritage. Neighbours and the local Italian community rallied round to support her.