The Tired Wolf
He enters the library where he imagines one could
with effort make out a whiff of the woods:
All the trees that have been felled and pulped down
into paper rectangles, glued, stitched and bound.
The light here is low and dappled just right.
There are corners for him to slink out of sight.
He believes he has found sanctuary,
somewhere he can finally sleep.
His yellow eyes start drifting shut,
when through the door with a self-assured strut
wearing a blood-coloured coat
& an unreadable grin
the young girl
catwalks in.
with effort make out a whiff of the woods:
All the trees that have been felled and pulped down
into paper rectangles, glued, stitched and bound.
The light here is low and dappled just right.
There are corners for him to slink out of sight.
He believes he has found sanctuary,
somewhere he can finally sleep.
His yellow eyes start drifting shut,
when through the door with a self-assured strut
wearing a blood-coloured coat
& an unreadable grin
the young girl
catwalks in.
This poem is copyright (©) Laura Theis 2025
About the Writer
Laura Theis
Laura's work appears in Poetry, Oxford Poetry, Northern Gravy, The Caterpillar, Magma, Rattle, Tyger Tyger, Aesthetica, iamb, etc.
Her Elgin-Award-nominated debut how to extricate yourself (2020), an Oxford Poetry Library Book-of-the-Month, won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize.
A Spotter’s Guide To Invisible Things (2023) received the Live Canon Collection Prize and the Society of Authors’ Arthur-Welton-Award.
Other accolades include the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize, Poets & Players Prize, Oxford Brookes Poetry Prize, AM Heath Prize, and Mogford Prize.
Her new collection Introduction to Cloud Care and her children's debut Poems from a Witch’s Pocket are both forthcoming in 2025.
