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Spring rousing
The bear stumbles out of her den, legs stiff with slow blood.
She rubs a paw across her muzzle, too dazed yet to be hungry.
The meltwater creeks hiss by at half-flood,
and she blinks at the light strained through the trees.
When she lay down to sleep, it was the death of time,
and she hovered in moveless coma all these months,
her thick fur pulled up to her ears; leaves and grime
washing against her inert paws and cool rump.
Soon enough, there will be berries and acorns,
but now she is wild for the sharp taste of ants,
scooped from the earth, sweet and painful like thorns.
She rumbles on, limbering, lean, searching for sour wood sorrel plants.
This is the start of the bear-year, the dawn of the summer-day,
and she feels resurrected, if bears had such a word.
Born into the spring, and glad to cast off the grey
dirt of the den and put on her warm and sunshot fur.
The bear stumbles out of her den, legs stiff with slow blood.
She rubs a paw across her muzzle, too dazed yet to be hungry.
The meltwater creeks hiss by at half-flood,
and she blinks at the light strained through the trees.
When she lay down to sleep, it was the death of time,
and she hovered in moveless coma all these months,
her thick fur pulled up to her ears; leaves and grime
washing against her inert paws and cool rump.
Soon enough, there will be berries and acorns,
but now she is wild for the sharp taste of ants,
scooped from the earth, sweet and painful like thorns.
She rumbles on, limbering, lean, searching for sour wood sorrel plants.
This is the start of the bear-year, the dawn of the summer-day,
and she feels resurrected, if bears had such a word.
Born into the spring, and glad to cast off the grey
dirt of the den and put on her warm and sunshot fur.