The inadequacy of howling.
I think of wolves, sometimes… melancholy times.
Toward the end of a wolf’s life in the pack, staring at the westering moon at sunset, and seeing the faint penumbra completing an implicit ring of its circumference… What wolf, realizing, as if it mattered, that the moon is a ball, not just some inconstant light source which waxes and wanes of its own accord wouldn't want to share the observation?
Perhaps this lone wolf, joined by the progeny of the Alphas of its pack might wish to share this avuncular observation with his junior, but what words?
None.
The call of the hunt would have no term for an object that’s not prey, or obstacle, or new path.
No growl or bark beyond the expression of immediate and momentary displeasure could encompass the otherworldly observation.
No yap of distress which, absent from its context, could do other than to confuse.
No expression of play, no sharing of branch to tug-of-war with, no forlorn look, could breach the conceptual distance - any more than that wolf, on realizing that the thing in the sky was another surface with its own terrain, could then journey to walk on it, and stalk what prey there may be there.
Perhaps an exceptional wolf might wonder how many wolves before it may have had this same thought, then desired to share it, but found no way to impart the observation. Perhaps had this wolf known, when he was as young as the pup beside him, he may have spent his solitude examining the other phenomenon around him and made more such observations, then shared them with this youngster, and so extended his this observation to grow across the minds of generations beyond him.
Would this overwhelm the wolf? Would he lift his head skyward, and with his whole body stretch his frame against the inevitability of his passing, and with this anguish and melancholy, let forth a sound that articulates his frustration; a howl?
That, at least, he could share.