Wolves at the Longhouse Door (version 2)

Intro

Longhouse built from hands not lumber, forty winters strong

Grandmother sang the tally count so no one counted wrong

Snow packed the sill like plaster, door bar thick as bone

Somewhere past the treeline something circled, low and prone

Verse

Grandfather kept the trapline three miles past the ridge

Checked it before sunrise, ice cracking on the bridge

Pelts stretched tight on willow frames, hung along the wall

Traded fur for flour when the harvest wouldn't fall

Wolves came close in famine years, ribs showing through the gray

He said hunger makes a beggar out of anything that preys

Kept a rifle by the doorframe, kept a blade beneath the bed

Said the door holds more than weather, holds the living from the dead

Six of us packed in that longhouse, sharing every coal

Rationed meat by firelight, split it soul for soul

Tally marks in charcoal counted debts we'd never spend

Every scar he wore was a lesson, not an end

One January the pack got bold, scratched along the beam

He didn't flinch, just loaded slow and doused the lamp's last gleam

Shot rang once, the circling stopped, silence took the yard

He said the door will hold if the ones inside stand hard

Chorus

Wolves at the longhouse door, they smell what we don't got

They circle every winter, testing every lock we bought

We don't run, we don't beg, we just stack the wood up more

Legends aren't the ones who left, they're the ones who held the door

Verse

Same house still standing, siding rusted at the seam

Grandfather's rifle traded for a phone that never rings clean

Now the wolves wear polos, come around when rent's past due

Clipboard where the teeth were, same hunger pushing through

My father held that door too, forty years on the line

Factory closed the summer I turned nine, no severance, no sign

He split the deer meat even when the freezer ran thin

Taught me count your blessings by the ones you let back in

Collectors called at supper, voice smooth as oiled leather

He hung up slow and told me storms don't care about the weather

I watched him tally bills in charcoal like Grandpa did

Same hand, same debt, different decade, same door he never hid

Block got hungrier than the ridge line ever was

Every dealer selling comfort wrapped in daylight cause

I kept the porch light burning, kept the chain up tight

Wolves don't knock in daylight, they wait on you all night

Chorus