I come from a people who are fierce,

Their ferocity has looked like a great many things.

It has looked like a man who robbed the rich to feed the poor,

It has looked like a man who robbed the poor to feed his appetite.

It has looked like a man bent over the Declaration of Independence with quill, ink, and an indelible hope for a more perfect union.

It has looked like a man whose father was Abraham and whose skin was olive and whose love for an enslaved woman was strong enough for a marriage in the darkest of the American south.

It has looked like her face shining sepia out of a daguerreotype, defiant like a woman in love and surrounded by the children of her defiance.

It has looked like a man who built a railroad across the land of a prairie people who would never recover,

the wealthiest woman in the world, whose art and jewels are now piled in galleries for the delight of slack-jawed gapers.

It has looked like a white woman stolen by the local tribe and returned with child- a mixed child of indigenous and settler- a compromise of blood and water.

It has looked like a man who gave millions of dollars to Booker T. Washington to start schools for black students,

And a man who carried a creased membership card for the KKK in his wallet.

Every one of those people are my people and those who populate my family tree.

But who they are is not who I am.

I am myself.

And I am myself because I have followed the voice of one crying out in the wilderness and found my teacher who, in turn, found me.

He found me and draped me with the edge of his cloak even while I gurgled in my own blood and he told me to live.

Because of Him, I am myself and I am not them.

But their blood still boils in my veins.

Their intensity, their thrill, their wild-aliveness that made them into sinners and saints of the highest order is inside of me in a way that I cannot fully escape.

They are the wolf in me.

The reason I drive a little too fast and listen to music a little too loud, and why I am always, always ready to ride at dawn.

They are the reason my heart does not beat but thunders.

They are the noice and the brilliance and the darkness inside of me. But they are not me.

They are the wolf inside of me.

But the lamb has greater purchase.

I am no Beatrice.

No Mary.

No Lucy with her eyes on extended platter, ever staring out for signs of trouble.

I am like the Florentine,

Half way through my journey.

I am the wolf.

Hungry.

Too hungry.

I want to be hungry for the bread of the life, I want to be hungry for Spiritu Sancti.

And most days I am and the she-wolf is the shadow in the wilderness I stumble through,

But there are times when I am behind her eyes.

I am not my past nor am I the blood inside of me,

And when the wolf has her way with me, I am not her either.

I am new and I am old,

I am winning and I am losing and I am holy while I am sinning.

I belong to the upside down kingdom where the lamb wins,

Where the king is a servant to the people,

Where my cheek is turned for a matching strike.

I belong to the backward people of salt and light.

No matter how thick my blood is,

No matter how hungry the wolf is.