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DAEL ALLISON
The Bear
- Ted Hughes penned the bear omnipotent;
- darkly mountain cached, lurking
- bone-crunch fear, an endless descent
- to the consummation of death.
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- The spring bear of Mary Oliver,
- with her black fists, her red fire
tongue,
- is an illumination
- of how to love this world.
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- There is no bear in my land’s scape
- but I imagine her emerging
- from an opal cave, swatting bass
- from a silver billabong, plucking
- crimson berries with her velvet mouth.
- Mildly, plagued all the while by bush
flies,
- she shakes her shaggy head.
- A full day’s fossick ends when she
- rumbles up an acrid methane burp and
rests,
- back-haunched, in forest dusk. Her small
- red eyes swivel on firefly flight.
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- Which bear is this?
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- After the seamless, dreamless
- encaved months of winter night,
- my bear would be that first emerging,
- drenched in sunrise,
- wide mouthed,
- earth summoning,
- celebratory
- roar.
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