Daniel Lusk
Daniel Lusk is author of eight poetry collections and other books, most recently Every Slow Thing, poetry (Kelsay Books 2022) and Farthings, eBook (Yavanika Press 2022). Well-known for his teaching and widely published in literary journals, his genre-bending essay, “Bomb” (New Letters) was awarded a Pushcart Prize. Native of the prairie Midwest and a former commentator on books for NPR, Daniel is a Senior Lecturer of English Emeritus at the University of Vermont. Poetry News
This poem appears in the Summer 2025 issue of The Orchards Journal.
Sermon of the Wolf
Where is the woman
who can live one year as a human
and the next as a bird?
Where is the woman today
who has suckled a bear?
In old Ireland Fergne the physician
could tell from a man’s face
what the illness was.
Just as he could tell from the smoke
that came from a house
how many were sick inside.
Boys and girls, we thought
we were the wolves’ children.
That licking each other’s faces
was food for our desires.
No one warned us not to go
into the fields of corn.
The corn would keep our secrets.
Who will tell us to be quiet
among the ignorant?
To cover our heads lest
we faint from truth.
Should we not ask such things?
We know that night is 11,400 miles wide.
Without bears or bats or fire,
what is there to worship?
