Dear Ursus – Poems

The days are

Short as midgets

And you my bear

Have bedded down.

Your metabolism will slow

But your body temperature will remain

High enough for hovering over little ones

As they nestle into your fur

Your hot breath keeping them warm.

Neither food nor drink for such a long time,

Sun rising and setting upon your half-closed eyes

The lengthening days of your lingering hibernation.

Fattened, hungry, the patience of a deity.

You are my deity! And

With your better than believed vision

Many a night

You will see the moon bright

And shining through the branches.

Eight weeks from now

You, my mammalian kindred one,

Will give birth to naked cubs

The size of small squirrels

Who in the depth of the dark frigid dusk

Will suckle on your six hot nipples with

Pulsing humming contented pleasure. And

All will be,

As it should, be.

Dear Ursus,

Every year

I tussle with my inexplicable furlessness

My strange lack of fur,

Like you will scuffle

Come spring, with your demanding cubs

Who all winter you have kept warm within

Your legs and arms, high protective walls,

Layered,

With thick inviting fur.

Like a kid holding the string of a kite

Tempted by

The sky,

I do so long to go

Walking, serenely, down into the forest

Following your prints in the recent snow

And slither like a silent snake up to you,

Once arriving by your restful side

Bewailing moaning cooing soft squeals of deploring distress,

Hoping to fool you,

Black-furred white-crested dark-nosed pregnant sow

Into thinking I slipped out before your time.

Bright lights, this December,

Grate against my senses like sandpaper.

My instinctual animal self lulled into winter-lethargy,

As I blow air from my mouth, clack my teeth, and paw at the ground.