How Long She'll Last in This World- Maria Melendez

From Maria Melendez's book of poems called How Long She'll Last in This World, I personally liked the one on pg. 22 called "Auallido", which reads as follows:

In the Sierra Madre
they say, "El alma de
un lobo nunca desaparecia
de este mundo"-

a wolf's spirit never
disappears from the forest.
"Siempre su espiritu
estaba pendiente de vigilar

todo lo que habia
a su alrededor;
era el protector
de los bosques."

Can you picture a wolf's spirit?
It's not the gray, wispy thing
screen-printed as background
on countless tees.

It's solid as granite,
forged in fire, firm
as the basement rock
of the Rocky Mountains.

Can you picture a wolf's
spirit as sculptor
of the moose, the cottonwoods,
even the willows?

It is mammalian and familial:
there is a loba spirit flowing
in your breast milk and in the mik
of elk, moose, deer.

So come back here, loba,
recuerda estas montanas, mother mountains:

San Juan Range, Sierra del Huacha, Culebra Range, Spanish Peaks,
Front range, Snowy Range, Sierra de la Encantada, Sawatch Range,
Gore Range, White Mountains, Black Range, Mogollon Mountains,
Burro Mountains, Sierra del Nido, Sierra Madre

Living wolf, spirit in flesh,
breathe here,
walk here, recall these places
you never left.

Glance again in time's long mirror
and recognize yourself.

I can personally identify with this poem and not only because of my Spanish background. This poem indicates that the spirit of the loba never leaves the forest therefore even though they might be killed or extinct they will always be part of the forest even if it is only in spirit. It is interesting that Melendez makes clear that the spirit of this loba is everlasting and as hard as a granite rock. I believe that the reference of the loba (which is a female wolf) is representative of the mother figure, whether it is as Mother Nature or in the case of any nurturing mother. It is through the nurturing mother that this rebellious spirit common in the wilderness is passed from mother to offspring. Therefore, the offspring themselves possess the rebelliousness that has made the loba so distinctive. This is how all human beings have in them some rebelliousness and untamed wilderness. As the poem advices at the end- since we possess this wilderness we should go back to nature. We should go back to nature like our ancestors did before industrialization. We should go back as if we never left. We should go back because this is the only way when we are able to discover our true self and not what our rigid society has set upon us. Nature provides the total liberation and freedom that we all wish we had but most of the time never find.