If the werewolf was a botanist,
She could wake from her rampage
And trace her moon-mad trail
From the battered leaves tangled in her hair.

At first she followed the forest path,
That tame game trail for Homo Sapiens
Who read the studies on depression and
Slip into the woods to lose their woes.

She plunged down a tunnel of sweetgum,
Like the fragrant green gullet of a leafy whale.
The five-lobed leaves, so easy to identify,
Testified from her hair, and memory of
The gumballs pricked her palms where the pads of her paws once were.

But safety is tedious,
And for a wild thing, fleeting.
The moon drove her off the abiding trail,
Through a dark patch of berries, blue or sparkle,
She cannot quite tell from their crushed and itchy leaves.

She crashed through a low marsh
Limned by bamboo, indigenous, not exotic,
The tender shoots crushed, fragrant,
Lime-green strings braided through a curl.

And then the sandy land of pines,
The two-needled loblolly,
Longleaf, Queen of the Forest,
All standing in worship, reaching toward the shining moon.

She bowed her head and shook the needles from her crown;
The leaves had no other story to tell,
No natural advice on how to protect herself
From the kind of humanity who misunderstood
Her a murderer and not just a carnivore.

If only she could hear the plants singing,
She would know what pieces
To pound into poultice,
What elixir to mix,
What to eat to cure her hunger.

But even in the forest,
Under the watchful, mothering trees
And the wild silvery moon,
She will have to learn the cure for hunger
Is never in more eating.