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Once I saw a dead cub floating near shore, free of fur
but still flesh, a transparent apparition. I couldn’t tell if she fell, spooked,
or wounded first, she slid.
Where else can they go?
(Where, for that matter, can any of us?)
In a speedboat’s wake the ghost cub rose and fell, upright
in a way, like a small child crawling on her hands and knees in
supplication or (vain) escape.
We fed mouse-click fodder to the gods, slept like sugar ants sticky
on the counter, wandered alone, tender flesh, and more than once
succumbed, gladly.
Let them in! (I’m scared.)
My neighbors say no. (They’re scared.)
Once in the woods, I came upon a dead chicken, still feathered, hung from a limb
over loaves of Wonder Bread, still wrapped and on fire,
in a shallow pit. Or I should say, smoldering.
Bear bait, the ranger told me. Don’t you know?
(This is not ours!)
. . . a hard pew, a hand recorder, an agenda, Ecclesiastes, maybe or Acts,
an organ velvet-draped beneath the Power Point
—or else a torn warning from a trailhead.
How rarely, now, we drop to our knees: to scrub the floor
with a dirty sponge, to wrap heat tape on pipes in the crawl space, to try
(vainly) to protect what’s ours.
(None of it is ours!)
Mud bees nest in knotholes under the eaves and 3/8th screw holes
on the boombox casing; the rifle was bought legally,
the suspect appears to be
in a state of shock.
When the wake rolled smooth, the cub tipped from sight.
(What of it is ours?)