You’ll get used to it
What the old ones say
Just takes some time
To learn how to control
Control when the screaming
Turns to howling
How many times it takes
How many full moons
They don’t say
To stop dreading that moon rise
When the shape change comes
Shape of man to
Shape of wolf
And back again
When the moon sets
Feels like hammers on bone

Bob Wertzler is retired from almost twenty years in the mental health field in California and Arizona. There are times the title, “Recovering Therapist”, seems to fit. In 2006 he retired to move to Western North Carolina to help and become primary care giver for his father who had developed Dementia. Before all that, there was work at various times as a soldier (US Army 1967-70), community organizer, cab driver, welfare case worker, wooden toy maker, carpenter, warehouse worker, and other things. He relates to a line in a Grateful Dead song, “What a long, strange trip its been.”