But soft! who's snoring on the common lawn!
Young sot! He tore them open with his claws,
This bear intemperate's guzzled every one
Of the thirty six we thought to call our own.
Brilliant!
*gives banana split to beeswacky.
First, a stolen Moosehead shipment disappears.
Well, I don't believe in abstinent bears.
Anyway, this cub found the stolen beers
before the local yokels could snatch away
the stolen stash and stow it elsewhere,
where it might have been safe from a nosy young bear.
Bite marks on only six cans,
has to be because s/he wasn't grown enough to use her/his bearish hands.
Last night I went out to the paddock
peering between the stars
in time to watch
the moon's eclipse
The mist moved in
and threw
a blur of brightness
just beyond the ridge
Beside me, horses grazed,
their jaws at work,
the steady crunch of stalks
rhythmed the night
as the round moon
swung up the sky
At last the shadow
ate the moon
And crunching stopped
Be easy, now, I said
don't you lads know
there are bears upstairs
circling slowly
above our heads?
O men have built a jail for bears,
and do not give them candy bars or ginger ale
or salami sausage or a side of bacon
but incarcerate bears; one mistake
for ursines is simply showing up --
then bears, without a trial, are in the hoosegow put.
Bears are not quite what one might think:
a bear's a wondrous creature
for three to five months it dozes;
and during this time an odd feature --
its bowel and bladder output simply closes
down, nor does it eat or drink --
such facts make bear scientists pause and blink.
I wandered lonely past the bridge
With traffic jams, the oaths and jeers --
Then I did spy along one ridge
A horde of golden grizzly bears;
Down to the lake, and through the trees
Each one rambling where it pleased.
bears are almost through
stealing camper's beer
almost dug into dens
creviced in caves
tucking themselves
within hollow trees
for a four-month snooze
until they rise
with the sap in spring
ravenous enough
to eat everything
One thing about bears,
they don't exist only now and here.
They make transistions,
between catching salmon and drinking beer,
between denning in caves and living neatly
in that bears-cottage wee Goldilocks dispoils so incompletely.
They can sleep for longer than eight hours.
Bears have strange and magic powers.
Now that's started me wondering: are there any Anglo-Saxon or Norse/Scandinavian constellations of boars? Wild boar were imposing creatures in the Celtic myths -- surely they had one oir two constellations featuring pigs?
Wild boars were indeed imposing creatures in Celtic myth, & are imposing creatures in RL too; they'll kick your arse. Warriors would prove their doughtiness by taking on the meanest & nastiest of the bigguns. Mind you, many of the greatest Celtic legends revolve around cattle rustling, so that gives you an idea of the kind of folk we're on about.
The Boar or Sow would have been associated with the Moon in March, if memory serves. I'm not sure if they had a constellation connected with it. I'm not sure if a true Druidic calendar (would have been lunar) has survived, I think the standard Gaellic calendar was based on the same elements as the eastern ones.
Oh yes, and carnyxes were wonderful. Designed to freak out the enemy on a battlefield (& probly for ceremonial ritual use or something as well) they had an ullulating wooden tongue. Fantastic link, homunculus, thanks.
Yes, this is great stuff, homunculus. Thanks.
Robert Graves, in The White Goddess, went to great lengths to (re?)establish a Celtic calandar. Book is a fine read, but mostly hypotheses.
I have never seen this written about anywhere, but I've suspected Graves' work formed the basis for much of the New Age/Celtic calendar/tree/myth interest which became so popular toward the end of the late 20th century.
Grave's is being overly inventive, and working without really knowing a Celtic language. We do have two authentic Continental Celtic calendars; the most complete one is the Coligny Calendar, fragments found in the ruins of a Gaulish temple. You can read about it here. Graves is responsible for a lot of the more crap-laden Neo Pagan and New Age "Celtic" stuff, including the "Mother-Maiden-Crone" stuff. But he's also responsible for I Claudius for which he has earned sufficient good karma to overwrite the bad, in my book.
On Constellations, there probably is a boar one, but I'd have to go hunting in a couple of books, and I've just started my first cup of coffee and I'm supposed to writing . . .
Aha! Thanks, digitalmedievalist, I've been waiting decades to have my base suspicion confirmed.
Graves' father was a Gaelic scholar, if I recall correctly.
And yes, Graves wrote some interesting novels. His autobuigraphy, Goodbye to All That is quite readable, too, for anyone interested in WWI.
It's years since I read the White Goddess, and I do recall e.g. some dubious attempts to reconstruct Caddeu Gododdin (sp), but wasn't in at base Graves' thesis on the muse? He was always more interested in poetry than prose, which IMO is a shame as he was much better at the latter. He had some line about a litmus test for real poetry being that it made the hair on the back of your neck stand up which I liked though.
In tthe book, Graves' thesis is that all true poetry is written to celebrate the triple goddess (maiden, mother, hag) of the ancients and that the poet must essentially write in guise of the Goddess' lover, (so none of this nonsense about daffodils or skylarks, if ye please).
If I recall correctly, however, it was Housman who first articulated the notion that a real poem should cause horipilation on the part of the reader. Graves' notion is somewhat similar but would place La Belle Dame Sans Merci at the centre of poetic inspiration.
Agree Graves was a more impressive writer of prose. Serving in modern warfare as Graves did does not seem to be conducive to the writing of great poetry, but doesn't seem to work to the detriment of writing prose.
Even I, Claudius, which is a fantastic book in all respects, is historically dubious in the extreme. I still say that its one of the best works of historical fiction ever written, however.
Claudius himself was not nearly so nice a fellow, although he had his good points.
Graves' poetry & theories were very much an expression of his era, imho. I agree that The White Goddess has a lot to answer for in the late renaissance of 'new age' thought.
Graves was, I think, farthest off the mark in his "translation" (it was nothing of the kind) of "Cad Goddeu," the "Battle of the Trees." Cad Goddeu is in the Llfyr Taliesin, and it's one of the weirder "transformation" poems of the "mythological" Taliesin (as a poetic construct separate from the actual poet). Graves essentially started a school of well, Celtic pseudo scholarship that is alive and well today, largely under the aegis of Llewellyn Publishing, and a few prime spear carriers. Peter Ellis, Celticist and author of fun mysteries has an good article on Graves' scholarship in the context of Celtic astrology here.
Well, that was, for me, a grand read! Even as a callow youth, I had many reservations about this work of Graves, for Graves clearly says, among other odditites, that he proceeded by 'analeptic' means -- that is, by throwing his mental focus back in time in 'poetic trance' -- to derive much of the underlying data. I was quite thunderstruck reading that.
So I am immensely gratified to read this and see The White Goddess finally discussed seriously.
?Thank you, digitalmedievalist!
Climbing a tree
might let you steer free
of a grown grizzly;
but since black bears
can climb efficiently,
better use
some other strategy.
Here's a bit more on the bear cult and King Arthur as a bear/sun god (posted by taz on MeFi).
Bears, bears, bears!
They go thumping up and down the stairs,
making themselves at home in mine
and leaving bear mess everywhere.
Under this roof, bears are doing just fine.
Oh, if I was a bear with beers galore
I'd never go outdoors any more
unless I needed a chocolate bar,
and then I'd raid the corner store.
Bears' lives are simple, they live in the deep woods,
and probably classify things as bad for bears or good.
Bears don't seem to be particular as to a certain brand.
just so it's beer bears seem to think it's bound to be grand.
Their bearish palattes are not sophisticated,
and bears seem to drink to become spifflicated.
Bears who like beers are mainly vegetarian,
and bears aren't noted for being egalitariuan.
whether calmly or in a rage,
bears invariably
take stage
bears like berries, beers,
salmon, syrup, and honey
and bears generally get
wnatever takes their fancy
few care to argue
with a bear intent
on taking everyone's share
Rude folk draw parallels
between the noise
of boys and bears,
or point to the mess both may
make of a house in less than a day.
In time, boys often settle down,
but bears never care
for being taught not to slam the door
or strewing clothing upon the floor.
Bears refuse to wash dirty dishes,
and grouchy bears are sometimes viscious,
for it seems bears have never come to realize
that cooks will bake and feed the tidy cakes and pies.
how it creaks, the hinge of the year
when we wonder what used to be
before there were bears,
we perceive there were dinosaurs,
we discern there were trees and ferns,
and before there were trees or leaves
we think there was night and day
and the fathomless sky of stars
which the hand of man can't touch
but in which man's lively mind, refusing
confinement, insists it can play
some men once thought the stars were only tiny holes
through which the brilliance of a higher world leaked,
stars as pinpricks pierced through black curtains overhead,
allowing divine light to shine down to the earth
even in the darkness that is night
since mankind can't easily define
what or who we are, some evidently find it
reassuring to suppose bears march
forever in cyclic paths around
what seems in the northern hemisphere to be
a fixed point of illumination overhead
which men, craving certainty,
envision as eternal verity
I'm just in awe. How do you do it, Bees?
The pedigree of honey
Does not concern the bee;
A clover, any time, to him
Is aristocracy.--Emily Dickinson
Mankind is not really willing to allow any other animals an inherent right to exist. Not when to do so it means curtailing our numbers or our 'rights' to build houses.
If you're a bear
You grow your very own underwear
As Cochin chicks grow
Feathery stockings.
Bears when they shop
Don't stop to look for clothes or pay
For what bears
Choose to take away.
o I am a man with a great fat brain
and you are a bear with a shaggy coat
yet it seems nowadays we can't rub along
without one of us getting the other one's goat
into your forest I came to hide my beer
but it was found and guzzled by some very young bear
and into my house you walked and you tore
open all the cupboards and the refrigerator door
you ate all my chocolate and drank all my beer
and left me with bear scat trodden everywhere
o bear I would trade my great fat brain
for paws with claws and bearish manners blunt and plain
The wind blows chillier from Arcturus.
The stars gutter, dwindling towards the pole.
The Great Bear lumbers east and east.
Dawn whitens over a dark sea
leans across the hills: the light! the light!:
-- Tim Reynolds
Bear circumscribes the pole
his form made visible by that lack of light
men call the night
he strides
pricked out in hot gold points
And through the day
behind the cloak of sunlight
by dazzling hidden away
the Bear swings on
his steps remorseless as the dawn
Hibernating animals stay awake this winter.
This winter's temperatures are higher.
Hedgehogs, badgers, black bears and brown
must hope things will soon cool down.
O when arctic ice melts away,
where can polar bears stay?
Danged if it didn't drop snow
all over us. So
it looks like bears now have to go
south for the winter, which will be hard on their paws.
Since the weather's turning strange outdoors
I hope they manage to grow wings
to help them with their wanderings.
bears hear well
but see poorly
they have a keen sense of smell
and can tell
where food is hidden
on the whole
their social skills
are nil
still
bears don't have to come
when they're bidden
or answer the phone
or pay the bills
or make mountains
out of molehills
black bears
are not troubled by stairs
which they climb
as easily
as they scale trees
bears can keep secrets
very well
they don't want canes
and they won't use crutches --
it's just as well
for a bear often eats
most of what it touches
Hello, Great Bear up in the sky!
I've often watched ye pacing by
and wondered what ye find to eat
as ye prowl past on starry feet.
Do ye find honey high up there?
Do berries grow near Cassiapeia's Chair?
And does the Dog Star ever bark at you
as earthbound hounds near bears are wont to do?
=Casseiopeia's
Is Beeswacky back? Woo-hoo. I is a happy Bear....guy.
Hi, BearGuy!
a paw
sunk deep
in the soft soil
of a seep
bent stalks
pressed flat
only now
lifting
hairs along the spine
of the old dachshund
stand up
sniffing faster
she tugs at her leash
willing to follow the trail
eleven pounds to two hundred or more
I think as I scoop her up
tuck her under one arm
so neither party
comes to harm
Isabel met an enormous bear,
Isabel, Isabel, didn't care;
The bear was hungry, the bear was ravenous,
The bear's big mouth was cruel and cavernous.
The bear said, Isabel, glad to meet you,
How do, Isabel, now I'll eat you!
Isabel, Isabel, didn't worry,
Isabel didn't scream or scurry.
She washed her hands and she straightened her hair up,
Then Isabel quietly ate the bear up.....-- Ogden Nash, from "The Adventures of Isabel"
he has his lair
above earth's air
the Starry Bear
light-years away from anywhere
that's touched by mankind's city glare
he circles there
and lifts his head to snuff and stare
he stands foursquare
and solitaire
for he is Bear
bears when they wake
from winter sleep
are apt to be grouchy
and bad company
as who wouldn't be
lying denned so long
without a bite to eat
and waking up
with your furry hide
hanging in folds
over your hunger
for half the year
Persephone hides
inside the earth
and dwells with Pluto
lord of death
the second half
she draws a breath
of springfresh air
and under sun
she strides on land
she is, I think
a kind of bear
I remember when everybody knew
a man is buried deep inside
each bear's hide
and we painted on the walls
of the cave man and bears shared
our selfsame dreams of where we came from
and where we both go once we've died
ah, bees, ye've done it again
if bears
could sing
their song
would go
at night
salmon leap
over pools
of stars
Hive looked low
and nightly I look high
for our Bear Guy
within the far-starred den
he may lie low
I hope
he'll walk some day
with monkeys and with mortal men
and sweep us round
the farthest reaches
of the Zodiac again
this being spring
when the flowers
start blooming
I'm wondering
when bear tales
will be resuming
as bears wake up
they're grouchy and fuming
so 'tis best to head
another way
if ye meet a bear
in the month of May
bears know about caves
and dens and hollow trees
they are well-versed in mysteries
spending as they do the winter
cirled up asleep and not on skis
Methinks this thread deserves a special chapter of its own. Muchos ))), bees!
Bears inspire Bees!
Bears love honey. And bears love Bee's honey tongue.
The Truro Bear
Mary Oliver
There’s a bear in the Truro woods.
People have seen it - three or four,
or two, or one. I think
of the thickness of the serious woods
around the dark bowls of the Truro ponds;
I think of the blueberry fields, the blackberry tangles,
the cranberry bogs. And the sky
with its new moon, its familiar star-trails,
burns down like a brand-new heaver,
while everywhere I look on the scratchy hillsides
shadows seem to grow shoulders. Surely
a beast might be clever, be lucky, move quietly
through the woods for years, learning to stay away
from roads and houses. Common sense mutters:
it can’t be true, it must be somebody’s
runaway dog. But the seed
has been planted, and when has happiness ever
required much evidence to begin
its leaf-green breathing?
old grizzly bear
will carve a tree
with great stout claws
and energy
those scratches
high above my head
indicate
I should have fled
A.E. Housman
The Grizzly Bear is huge and wild
It has devoured the little child.
The little child is unaware
It has been eaten by the bear.
water raves
its way over the falls
chews out the pool below
spray flies everywhere
we camp nearby
in chattering rain
then a big bear's there
planting his feet
on uphill rocks
he cuts us off
we leap we swim
as water tumbles us
we see him
unmake our beds
eat our supply
of biscuits
bacon sugar
while we shiver
on the farther
spruced up shore
loverly, bees!
a large brown bear
knocks on the door
he's done it
a couple of times
before
when he steps in
we leave in haste
and let him have
the run of the place
moral: when ye live
in the woods in Croatia
ye can be all too close
to nature
bear one came over the mountain
no doubt all the way from Italy
bear two came over the mountain
to see if anyone was counting
bear three bought a railway ticket
and rode all the way in comfort
instead of trudging through the high mopintain pass
after which he became both a bore and a braggart
long ago folk craved
to live inside a sheltered cave
despite the glares
of short-nosed bears
who liked to sleep their winters through
as modern long-nosed bears are wont to do
cave bears were a most impressive sight
when they appeared in flickering light
and cave men must have been quite desperate
to set up camp where bears weren't separate
I think most children take to bed
A short-nosed bear with quiet eyes
A fluffy gut and a giant head
It's a panda, man - surprise!
There's been dispute as to whether giant pandas belong to the broader category of bearsa or of raccoons. At the present, I think scientific opinion favours bears, but opinion has shifted before and may well do so again.
I wonder what the dispute is over? DNA or physical characteristics?
Great Bear
Greybeard
the walnut trees
just up the old lane
are being visited again
by this year's bears
knee-deep through purple asters
studding the back pastures
they leave a trail
of laid-low grasses
when the wind shifts
horses in the uncut meadow lift
their startled heads
and muscles tense to flee
if need should be
It's that time of year here, for sure. There was a pile of fresh bear scat on a trail maybe 100 meters from last night's campsite. Nearby stood a colorful berry bush, yet unplundered.
I hung my food very carefully that evening, and decided to forego any sort of dinner that might smell enticing. That left me with raisins, figs, and almonds, but mostly carrots. Bear as diet aid, hmm....
great. You know global warming is a hoax, though right? I know because Rush said so. Ditto, man. Ditto.
Actually I've only recently come to understand that polar bears are extremely uppity with the 'tude. That is their default position is 'pissed off'. And here I thought they were all cuddly.
That is their default position is 'pissed off'. And here I thought they were all cuddly.
Because they're drinking all that Coke. It keeps them on edge.
the Great Dreamers are bears
under the onyx wing of night
will bears dream a world into being again
as they did in the days when the earliest men
denned deep in the caves with the short-faced bears
back then, the seas rose high and froze
and bears and men hid from the cold
while the Long Snows lay and the Big Snooze came
for the cave bears and some of the very first men
bears dreamt us a world where the snows wept away
while the men painted pictures of beasts they would slay
could be it's polar bears' turn to dream
as the northern world turns to slush and greens
the mothers of these bears grow thin
because their life's become starvation
the seals come up and make blowholes in the ice
which suited white bears hunting something nice for dinner
but now the polar bears, like arctic ice, have grown much thinner
Invocation of the Great Bear
Great Bear, come down, shaggy night,
cloud-coated beast with the old eyes,
our eyes.
Through the thickets your paws break
shimmering with their claws,
star claws.
We guard our herds with a watchful eye,
though caught in your spell, and mistrust
your tired flanks and sharp,
half-bared fangs,
old bear.
A pine cone: your world.
You: its scales.
I hunt them, roll them
from the pines in the beginning
to the pines at the end.
Snort on them, test them with my muzzle
and set to work with my paws.
Be afraid or don't be afraid!
Just drop your coins in the collective basket and give
the blind man a good word,
let him hold the bear on its leash.
And spice the lambs well.
Perhaps the bear
will break loose, stop threatening,
and chase all the cones that have fallen
from the pines, freom the great, winged ones
hurled down from Paradise.
-- Ingeborg Bachmann, trans Mark Anderson
The mercury's gone over fifty.
Wherever a hoof or a boot is set
it splatters slush. From under winter's snow pack
comes ticking and trickling. The rocks are wet
along the dashing creek that creases the mountain.
A doe, no longer penned by deep snow,
steps delicately downhill. I wonder how long
till this too-early warmth enters the rift
in the rocks above, springing the bears.
Neanderthal, with Help from
Cave and Bear, Invents the Flute
In the dark cave of Slovenia
40,000 years of utter silence.
No one to lift this leg bone of bear.
Two finger-holes punched through
to take the mortal breath away,
and open to let out the skein
of tones closer to human moan
than humans moan, hoot of moon
wind-honed, horned, fervid scents,
fevered puddles of bison blood, beak
and breath of Gray Father, steam
of Mother Milk. We didn't know
Neanderthals had an ear.
We didn't know they beatified
their dead with color. In petal,
pistil, stamen they invented
prayer, and on the first flute
the closer-to-beastly unkin of us
worked, out of starless dark,
the melodies of bear, and birds
lilting off at dawn. The cave
is a flute, the skull is a flute
for wish to move through, true,
eye and nose hole waiting for
the skill to finger out our voices.
From the bones of our parents
we tease out the music of us.
-- David Citino
The Bears
My brother saw the amorous bears
rolling about in the meadow up by
Lowder Mountain -- the lupine crushed,
paintbrush flattened in their
loving swathe -- how he nibbled
her ear and she smacked him
with her paw, there in the fall
of fat September. And my brother
crept away on hands and knees
into the hemlock thicket.
Then the rain, the snow, and we
in our separate lives content
because sunlight struck a pair
of bears apart from our human way --
the wearing of shoes, and words,
and nations.
-- Kim Stafford
this poem is for bear
Gary Snyder
"As for me I am a child of the god of the mountains."
A bear down under the cliff.
She is eating huckleberries.
They are ripe now
Soon it will snow, and she
Or maybe he, will crawl into a hole
And sleep. You can see
Huckleberries in bearshit if you
Look, this time of year
If I sneak up on the bear
It will grunt and run
The others had all gone down
From the blackberry brambles, but one girl
Spilled her basket, and was picking up her
Berries in the dark.
A tall man stood in the shadow, took her arm,
Led her to his home. He was a bear.
In a house under the mountain
She gave birth to slick dark children
With sharp teeth, and lived in the hollow
Mountain many years.
snare a bear: call him out:
honey-eater
forest apple
light-foot
Old man in the fur coat, Bear! come out!
Die of your own choice!
Grandfather black-food!
this girl married a bear
Who rules in the mountains, Bear!
you have eaten many berries
you have caught many fish
you have frightened many people
Twelve species north of Mexico
Sucking their paws in the long winter
Tearing the high-strung caches down
Whining, crying, jacking off
(Odysseus was a bear)
Bear-cubs gnawing the soft tits
Teeth gritted, eyes screwed tight
but she let them.
Til her brothers found the place
Chased her husband up the gorge
Cornered him in the rocks.
Song of the snared bear:
"Give me my belt.
"I am near death.
"I came from the mountain caves
"At the headwaters,
"The small streams there
"Are all dried up.
-- I think I'll go hunt bears.
"hunt bears?
Why shit Snyder.
You couldn't hit a bear in the ass
with a handful of rice!"
Gary Snyder
Thanks, homunculus. This is a very encouraging outcome.
More on the Great Bear Rainforest here and here.
"This is a transformation of what happens in the British Columbia forest," she said in a phone interview. "The revolution is looking at a standing forest not as a commodity, but as an economic model based on conservation."
Holy crap. And just when I'd almost given up on thoughtful action.
Why does that first picture have a bear standing next to a giant green brain?
Well, there is the possibility that it's a zombie bear...but more likely, it wandered onto the set of Spock's Brain (warning: requires stomach for geeky details).
loon calls from the lakes
of the great north woods
where the bears still dance
the stars up and down
just beyond the firelight
of the first peoples
bears still wheel around the sky
to usher the seasons through
the haunts of caribou and moose
bears netting with light and shadow
the silence between the birch trees
and the spruce
Dear Polar Bears,
Soon, you will be extinct, and we will still be driving our SUVs. ISN'T THAT HILARIOUS?! BWAHAHAHAHA!
Love, the hairless monkeys.
I hate my species.
*pours another scotch*
For what it's worth, homunculus, the worst that can be said of our species is the worst that can be said of anything.
This, too, shall pass.
*rattles ice cubes in sympathy*
Know just how ye feel, homunculus.
Bears in winter asleep under snow
dream berries of summer
taste blossoms made sweet by the bees
trusting that spring will return
hearing, faintly, the call of the loon.
)))!!!
Very nice islander!
Set 'em up again H-dogg . . .
This has no bears in it, but there are a few roses.
Arise, Go Down
It wasn't the bright hems of the Lord's skirts
that brushed my face and I opened my eyes
to see from a cleft in rock His backside;
It's a wasp perched on my left cheek. I keep
my eyes closed and stand perfectly still
in the garden till it leaves me alone,
not to contemplate how this century
and the next begins with no one
I know having seen God, but no wonder
why I get throught most days unscathed, though I
live in a time when it might be otherwise,
and I grow more fatherless each day.
For years now I have come to conclusions
without my father's help, discovering
on my own what I know, what I don't know,
and seeing how one cancels the other.
I've become a scholar of cancelations.
Here, I stand among my father's roses
and see that what punctures outnumbers what
consoles, the cruel and the tender never
make peace, though one climbs, though one descends
petal by petal to the hidden ground
no one owns. I see that which is taken
away by violence or persuasion.
The rose announces on earth the kingdom
of gravity. A bird cancels it.
My eyelids cancel the bird. Anything
might cancel my eyes: distance, time, war.
My father said, Never take both your eyes
off of the world, before he rocked me.
At night we waited for the knock
that would have signalled, All clear, come now;
it would have meant escape; it never came.
I didn't make the world I leave you with,
he said, and then, being poor, he left me
only this world, in which there is always
a family waiting in terror
before they're rended, this world wherein a man
might arise, go down, and walk along a path
and pause and bow to roses, roses
his father raised, and admire them, for one moment
unable, thank God, to see in each and
every flower the world cancelling itself.
-- Li-Young Lee
The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me
Delmore Schwartz
"the withness of the body" --Whitehead
The heavy bear who goes with me,
A manifold honey to smear his face,
Clumsy and lumbering here and there,
The central ton of every place,
The hungry beating brutish one
In love with candy, anger, and sleep,
Crazy factotum, dishevelling all,
Climbs the building, kicks the football,
Boxes his brother in the hate-ridden city.
Breathing at my side, that heavy animal,
That heavy bear who sleeps with me,
Howls in his sleep for a world of sugar,
A sweetness intimate as the water's clasp,
Howls in his sleep because the tight-rope
Trembles and shows the darkness beneath.
--The strutting show-off is terrified,
Dressed in his dress-suit, bulging his pants,
Trembles to think that his quivering meat
Must finally wince to nothing at all.
That inescapable animal walks with me,
Has followed me since the black womb held,
Moves where I move, distorting my gesture,
A caricature, a swollen shadow,
A stupid clown of the spirit's motive,
Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness,
The secret life of belly and bone,
Opaque, too near, my private, yet unknown,
Stretches to embrace the very dear
With whom I would walk without him near,
Touches her grossly, although a word
Would bare my heart and make me clear,
Stumbles, flounders, and strives to be fed
Dragging me with him in his mouthing care,
Amid the hundred million of his kind,
the scrimmage of appetite everywhere.
Dark
They wintered in caves
great bears, short-muzzled,
sharing with another animal
that stood upright, puzzling
over the enigma that was Bear
while bringing fire and light
to the chill of stone-bound night.
We can see Bear's skull on the ledge over there.
Over the eons, water seeped and dripped,
encasing it in a shell of translucent stone
that's not very thick. Beside it, we can still
make out the petrifyied seeds and flowers
and a shallow dish to hold a sputtering wick.
Thanks to a link from bees, I read this poem by Galway Kinnell.
The Bear
1
In late winter
I sometimes glimpse bits of steam
coming up from
some fault in the old snow
and bend close and see it is lung-colored
and put down my nose
and know
the chilly, enduring odor of bear.
2
I take a wolf's rib and whittle
it sharp at both ends
and coil it up
and freeze it in blubber and place it out
on the fairway of the bears.
And when it has vanished
I move out on the bear tracks,
roaming in circles
until I come to the first, tentative, dark
splash on the earth.
And I set out
running, following the splashes
of blood wandering over the world.
At the cut, gashed resting places
I stop and rest,
at the crawl-marks
where he lay out on his belly
to overpass some stretch of bauchy ice
I lie out
dragging myself forward with bear-knives in my fists.
3
On the third day I begin to starve,
at nightfall I bend down as I knew I would
at a turd sopped in blood,
and hesitate, and pick it up,
and thrust it in my mouth, and gnash it down,
and rise
and go on running.
4
On the seventh day,
living by now on bear blood alone,
I can see his upturned carcass far out ahead, a scraggled,
steamy hulk,
the heavy fur riffling in the wind.
I come up to him
and stare at the narrow-spaced, petty eyes,
the dismayed
face laid back on the shoulder, the nostrils
flared, catching
perhaps the first taint of me as he
died.
I hack
a ravine in his thigh, and eat and drink,
and tear him down his whole length
and open him and climb in
and close him up after me, against the wind,
and sleep.
5
And dream
of lumbering flatfooted
over the tundra,
stabbed twice from within,
splattering a trail behind me,
splattering it out no matter which way I lurch,
no matter which parabola of bear-transcendence,
which dance of solitude I attempt,
which gravity-clutched leap,
which trudge, which groan.
6
Until one day I totter and fall --
fall on this
stomach that has tried so hard to keep up,
to digest the blood as it leaked in,
to break up
and digest the bone itself: and now the breeze
blows over me, blows off
the hideous belches of ill-digested bear blood
and rotted stomach
and the ordinary, wretched odor of bear,
blows across
my sore, lolled tongue a song
or screech, until I think I must rise up
and dance. And I lie still.
7
I awaken I think. Marshlights
reappear, geese
come trailing again up the flyway.
In her ravine under old snow the dam-bear
lies, licking
lumps of smeared fur
and drizzly eyes into shapes
with her tongue. And one
hairy-soled trudge stuck out before me,
the next groaned out,
the next,
the next,
the rest of my days I spend
wandering: wondering
what, anyway,
was that sticky infusion, that rank flavor of blood, that
poetry, by which I lived?
from Body Rags, Galway Kinnell (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967).
If bears start eating hunters, no one will know
They don't want you to know we're winning some battles. Bad for hunter morale and all that.
white bears, can ye learn to estivate?
stay up all winter, then to bed late
come spring and sleep through snow and ice
melting, summer into fall, when up ye'd rise.
there seems no other ideal solution
unless bears somehow speed up their evolution.
unless bears somehow speed up their evolution.
Hey, a year ago, I couldn't type this, I had to dictate. (-;
Wow, a bear with a transcriptionist?
What next, BG in sartorial splendor with his own tailor?
the bear facts
bears don't have much use for tailors
bears like grocers, brewers, and honey
from the hive -- bears don't use money,
neither do they make blackmailers
*sigh*
Pointless, cruel, and contemptable.
Used to see an awful lot of this sort of thing when I was a kid -- not wrestling, though I heard tales of it, but I did witness many times wild animals kept in cages at roadside gas stations off some small highway or sideroad. Other kids and a surprising number of loutish adults poking wild animals with sticks, or kicking cages, the 'zoos' with no supervision or provision for the critter's welfare.
Used to get quite furious seeing some roadside pony ride set-ups (commonplace in North Americas back then) where animals were fastened to a rotating wheel of hitching bars, while left unshaded in hot sun with only an occaisional bucket of water being offered.
Nowadays I like seeing such things make headlines -- didn't used to. So to me it seems North America's come a small step along the road to behaving with more consideration to fellow mortals.
But whoa, horsies! If this keeps up, why some day we might even find ourselves being humane to one another! And then where would we all bee?
/joke, feeble, very small
a bear will take
a bear's-eye view
of everything
the world can do
Look! A unique grizzly/polar bear hybrid! Kill it!
The fearsome poizzly
Is polar and grizzly
and though they are fuzzily too -
Don't reach out to pet them
Cause it might upset them,
To bear it might cause you to poo
brown and looming
furry one
emerges from his cave
now that winter
snows are gone
huge animal
hugs his hunger
soon grows grumpy
and now the Chulym
all get jumpy
and make way
before brown beast
turns us
into his feast
Slamming into a not-so-enormous deer, ditto. Must say I think deer are a lot harder to avoid since they can bound onto roadways from cover, and before drivers have time to react, ka-boom. And deer are far more numerous.
Still, any day I don't meet a wild bear up close and personal is a very good day.
And such a corridor-cum-preserve sounds good, at least in pricipal. Much would depend, of course, on the particulars of its administration -- which is where such ideas can bog down or develop holes.
Here's hoping for the best, anyhow.
CAUTION: We have an 'n' thief loose in here!
Bees: are you sure it is 't a bear making his di er out of uts and berrys?
's. I mea o!
to think about bears
is to contemplate the stars
and those layers of time
since a colder globe spun
before the (presumably) gruff
cave bears were all undone --
even Neanderthals faded (somehow) away
in the eerie depths we label yesterday
bears and men confront great shiftings of the earth
and sweeps of time we scarcely understand
as ancient snows lie melting in the north
and all we thought we knew now, poles removed,
is second-guessed, unpropped, earth all unplanned
A star observed
A poem borne
A flicker there
A sacred bear
bear on a pole!
hurray!
cry I
I like to see
you, bear,
rounding off
the sky
you started when?
ever since bears
were
and men
Hello, bear.
What are ye doing
way up there?
Wny'd ye scramble
up that tree?
What makes ye fear
that Fierce Kitty?
why are ye lookin' like that
at me?
I'm a bear, and allowed to climb up
a tree
that thing hissed and it spat like
a lunatic
I thought it had rabies, and would make
me sick
Somebody's been watching too many Saturday morning cartoons.
From the Department of Well-known Facts: horses know nothing of climbing trees.
What beeswacky said.
Now look, if me and a grizzly are having a fight,
No, don't you think the fight is fair.
You talking about helping me?
You better help that grizzly bear.
Hurray for bears!
And for homunculus's poem, )))!!!
I stole it from Deadwood.
I wondered at the hitherto suppressed braggadocio, but it was fun reading it, regardless.
He's some kinda manimal, you know.
Bavarians never meant to share
their territory with a bear
bears don't have any rights in law
the situation's most unfair
since the places where bears can be
free of humanity
grow fewer and fewer by the day
as people keep taking bear's places away
And therin lay the irony
That bears could live in harmony
Without us,
But
We fucked that up.
men want to be the centre of the world
but the bear which doesn't care
yet stands at the stellar pole
above this globe he's always whirled
which all in all seems droll
ye bad bear!
ye visit my house
and collapse
every patio chair
and where ye
crashed in my hammock
it left a bear
bottom-sized tear
"It was better than watching a good movie on TV," she said.
You hammock'd bear
So wound
And heavy hung
O'er backyard ground
Of snoring peace'd
And backyard sound
Allow us wonder -
Allow us wonder
man to bear
some tribes call you Walks-like-a-Man
I often wonder do
you call us Walks-Like-a-Bear?
when you stare at me what do you see?
I know you can't see very well
but then men have little sense of smell
you, old rooter with the pollen-flecked muzzle
present men with a constant puzzle: whose
land is this? I hope we can share, both man and bear
bears get no day in court
man comes
and cuts the trees
and takes the forest away
from bears
this is a defeat
bears don't understand
until they can't find anything
to eat
except man's garbage
or man's beasts
or children
in the ruin of the woodland
and then a bruin
becomes a villain
whenever bear and man conflict
the bear comes out on the shorter end
of the stick
and I see this as unfair
to bears
who can't cut down
man's houses
and steal away the supeermarkets
the banks, the stores, the hospitals
or destroy the livelihood
of an entire town
*sigh*
Ach, don't ask how the pee got into the supermarkets!
The Day Care Bear
Caused a stir
Among people there
Among the whirr of 'copters, choppers, cameras and minds
As humanity blinks
In the bare light;
The Divine
A Three hundred pound news item
Pawing through trash
And huffing and trodding
And finding a path -
Three locals are questioned
Eight edits are made
At five, six, and ten
An answer is splayed on dark living room screens
To the question:
What is bear?
And What
Is
Being
Wild and lurking, Bruno paces
A steady roll crossland
Stop and scarf a sheep in places
And slip the surly bonds of man
Run, run, Bruno!
Here and there
Run, run, Bruno!
Italian bear!
Run, run, Bruno!
Always with a smiiiiiiile!
That bear's . . runnin' wild . .
I see it as a sort of acoustic-guitar/fandango deal with a "Convoy" singer deal goin' on . .
Proof
for Adam
Once he wrestled a bear, he said,
in a bar off-campus with eyes
glossy from lager, he wrestled
a bear. Claws and all, black fur
and the salmon of its muscles
leaping under the black fur.
Wrestled and won, he said,
the bear pinned and snorting,
pinned and one hundred pounds
heavier, with claws, with claws
and teeth, the electric blue current
of animal instinct. I was gullible
once, under kindergarten lights
with glitter and paste, building
a galaxy. A boy stole my stars
once, a bigger boy I wrestled
under the night of blackboard.
Wrestled and lost, pinned
and weeping with my back
to the carpet, with the fireflies
of glitter dazzling on my skin.
To the man who said he wrestled
a bear, wrestled and won, I said,
You're full of bear shit. But
a scar is proof and so began
the slow striptease of a pant leg
rolled to his knee. There, he said.
And his story sparkled on his flesh.
-- David Hernandez
Boo the bear tunnels to freedom, finds love and returns safely.
During his flight from captivity, Boo roamed around a 10-kilometre range and was spotted “doing regular grizzly bear things” ...
As opposed to what? Putting on a suit and tie or playing mah jong?
Bear Dreams
ROBERT WRIGLEY
What had seemed to him in June just a few
five-petaled pink wild roses
was in fact a weeks long, slow-moving onslaught
of flowers. He sees this now,
in September, having come down from the house
to the deep undergrowth outside the fence,
fence that keeps his dogs inside, fence
the young bear this morning had pushed against, paws resting
on the steel diamond links as it looked
toward something the man couldn't see inside the yard.
At the very click of the back door's latch
that bear bolted away, looked back once
from the narrow gravel road, and was gone.
How, the man wonders, could the world become enough?
Or not the even world, but a stone, a stump, the song
of a bird he wondered at but would not
seek out, neither in the branches of trees
nor the leaves and plates of a field guide,
preferring to feather and flight the sourceless singing,
wanting less to unknow some words than their meanings.
The way "rose" also means the bare skin of a girl
ten billion blossoms ago, who'd undressed and let him
look and only look and look at her looking back.
He'd wanted to see the whole soft machine then, all the cogs
and stigmata. She wanted to see him seeing,
and that is what he remembers now, just the half-gone image
of his seeing, not what he saw, though today a twig dangles broken
from the bear's going away, and now
a cool autumn wind sets the whole sprawling rose bush
nodding. It does not love
the bear or the birds or the man,
nor even the early bees that bob inside and pollinate its flowers.
What a perfect five-petaled plucked roulette
a wild rose must be: she could never love him not.
And if he knows this opulence of hips, this abundance
of fruit and seed, will surely lure another, braver bear,
who'll take the fence and feast to its fill—
which in a bear is almost never—he also knows that
in the long winter's sleep that's coming, a bear too,
even the fullest, most sated of bears, will dream
and see as it could not in the midst of its feasting
all that is no longer there, those seeds of another hunger.
whether it's a man or a bear,
we never really see ourselves until
we look into another's eyes,
at what's reflected there
From the Guardian article quoted in the Great Bear thread:
Bavaria still intends to honour the bear it has killed. Bruno will be stuffed and exhibited in Munich's Museum of People and Nature, Mr Bernhard, refusing to answer further questions.
I hope these SOBs never honour me or any o' mine.
The Bear
by Jim Harrison
When my propane ran out
when I was gone and the food
thawed in the freezer I grieved
over the five pounds of melted squid,
but then a big gaunt bear arrived
and feasted on the garbage, a few tentacles
left in the grass, purplish white worms.
O bear, now that you've tasted the ocean
I hope your dreamlife contains the whales
I've seen, that the one in the Humboldt current
basking on the surface who seemed to watch
the seabirds wheeling around her head.
Boo must have heard about what happened to Bruno. Great Bear be with you, Boo!
Essmmmarter than yah aver-age bair!
Boo the Bear
hightailed it out of there
over two electric fences
and through a steel door
those folk won't see Boo
any more
The Grizzly Bear
AE Housman
The Grizzly Bear is huge and wild
It has devoured the little child.
The little child is unaware
It has been eaten by the bear.
As is the barbecue-chicken-and-jalapeno pizza.
The Grizzly Bear is unaware
Just why he cannot keep his lair
The little children grow huge and riled
They need his land and fear the wild.
Bravo, islander.
Hmmm. Someone, and indeed the same someone, has quoted Housman's grizzly bear poem twice so far in this thread.
grizzle
he softshoes through the woods
with the greatest of ease
though he grows too old and stiff
for climbing trees
oops!
A Housman's grizzly
lay bare indeed
As bee-gets quizzly
A BlueHorse, treed.
The Truro Bear
There's a bear in the Truro woods.
People have seen it -- three or four,
or two, or one. I think
of the thickness of the serious woods
around the dark bowls of the Truro ponds;
I think of the blueberry fields, the blackberry tangles,
the cranberry bogs. And the sky
with its new moon, its familiar star trails,
burns down like a brand new heaven,
while everywhere I look on the scratchy hillsides
shadows seem to grow shoulders. Surely
a beast might be clever, be lucky, move quietly
through the woods for years, learning to stay away
from roads and houses. Common sense mutters:
it can't be true, it must be somebody's
runaway dog. But the seed
has been planted, and when has happiness ever
required much evidence to begin
its leaf-green breathing?
-- Mary Oliver
Happiness
In the afternoon I watched
the she-bear; she was looking
for the secret bin of sweetness --
honey, that the bees store
in the trees soft caves.
Black block of gloom, she climbed down
tree after tree and shuffled on
through the woods. And then
she found it! The honey-house deep
as heartwood, and dipped into it
among the swarming bees -- honey and comb
she liped and tongued and scooped out
in her black nails, until
maybe she grew full, or sleepy, or maybe
a little drunk, and sticky
down the rugs of her arms,
and began to hum and sway.
I saw her let go of the branches,
I saw her lift her honeyed muzzle
into the leaves, and her thick arms,
as though she would fly --
an enormous bee,
all sweetness and wings --
down into the meadows, the perfection
of honeysuckle and roses and clover --
to float and sleep in the sheer nets
swaying from flower to flower
day after shining day.
-- Mary Oliver
Bear
Robert Lee Frost
The bear puts both arms around the tree above her
And draws it down as if it were a lover
And its choke cherries lips to kiss good-bye,
Then lets it snap back upright in the sky.
Her next step rocks a boulder on the wall
(She's making her cross-country in the fall).
Her great weight creaks the barbed-wire in its staples
As she flings over and off down through the maples,
Leaving on one wire moth a lock of hair.
Such is the uncaged progress of the bear.
The world has room to make a bear feel free;
The universe seems cramped to you and me.
Man acts more like the poor bear in a cage
That all day fights a nervous inward rage
His mood rejecting all his mind suggests.
He paces back and forth and never rests
The me-nail click and shuffle of his feet,
The telescope at one end of his beat
And at the other end the microscope,
Two instruments of nearly equal hope,
And in conjunction giving quite a spread.
Or if he rests from scientific tread,
'Tis only to sit back and sway his head
Through ninety odd degrees of arc, it seems,
Between two metaphysical extremes.
He sits back on his fundamental butt
With lifted snout and eyes (if any) shut,
(lie almost looks religious but he's not),
And back and forth he sways from cheek to cheek,
At one extreme agreeing with one Greek
At the other agreeing with another Greek
Which may be thought, but only so to speak.
A baggy figure, equally pathetic
When sedentary and when peripatetic.
Spring
Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring
down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring
I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue
like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:
how to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black and leafy ledge
to sharpen her claws against
the silence
of the trees.
Whatever else
my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its glass cities,
it is also this dazzling darkness
coming
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;
all day I think of her --
her white teeth,
her wordlessness,
her perfect love.
-- Mary Oliver
Happiness indeed, thank you bees and Mary Oliver!
Boo, having sowed his oats, returns home for lunch and a nap.
Ah, Boo
then will ye end
a captive pent
in some small zoo
when roaming there and here
leaves a bear weary
to return
instead of dwelling
in the rugged hills
and fishing in a burn
home is still
the place where,
when even a grizzly
goes there,
they have to
take him in
Boo on Rapebear!
whom cows detest
an oaf who's never
at his best
As I've remarked elsewhere, the ignorance of human beings about the sexual impulses and functioning of other animals is fertile ground for profound ignorance.
Human beings are in a condition of perpetual readiness for sexual encounters once they reach a certain stage of development. But most other animals aren't at all like we are - they have a breeding season and a breeding behaviour that differs from their behaviour otherwise.
And with the increasing distance from the natural world we find this almost incomprehensible, and the gap in our grasp of things almost impossible to bridge.
I agree, Bees. It really is sad how we tend to anthropomorphize.
However, it doesn't stop me from posting any taglines.
MonkeyFilter: fertile ground for profound ignorance
In Boo's case it appears that he's not quite able to survive on his own. He hasn't learned how to forage for himself and he associates humans with food. If he can't accumulate sufficient fat at the height of summer, he'd be unlikley to survive his first winter in the wild. His prospects on his own, unfortunately, are probably limited to death by starvation or being shot.
So, as much as we'd like to see Boo be free and living the life of a real bear, he's probably better of where he is. At least he's still alive, unlike Bruno.
I wonder if it would be practical or sensible to put a radio collar on him each spring let him go get lucky for a few weeks?
Letting him out over and over until he's learned enough to survive in the wild on his own might work, but I don't believe it's feasible with people living in the general area.
He would seek out garbage, and fully grown grizzlies aren't noted for sweet tempers, let's face it. Grew too big, too intelligent, and too irascible and strong to be taught easily now.
What he needed was to be taught to live as a bear as he grew up -- he's grown too big for this to be an option now. And sadly he's without the fear of men that might have let him live in the wild if and when he little by little acquired the necessary bear's survival skills.
Afraid I see a zoo future for him, much as I wish he had other options.
I wonder if it would be practical or sensible to put a radio collar on him each spring let him go get lucky for a few weeks?
Ah, that probably wouldn't be a very good idea, Islander. You're anthropowhatchamacalliting again.
Most likely he hasn't learned the delicate art of romancing a female grizz, and this could be a bit of a turnoff, him rushing in with his hormones all lathered. She'd probably knock him into next Thursday, and he might or might not back off.
Like a bad first date: This could get ugly!
grizzlies never
make good pets
yet Boo the orphan grew
too used to people
with other bears
he'd have to grapple
in roaming loose
can brief escapes
serve as rehersal
for later living
in the wild?
would Boo learn
to feed himself
turn to fishing
in a northern burn?
go berry-picking
in the summer
and fatten up in fall?
pictures make threads
too slow to load
I don't have time for
bears to trickle in
A hungry bear
Atop the falls
Would bear no ill will to him
If what should leap
Into his maw
Was steak instead of salmon
The fish 'ee flies
And wiggles yet
Into a toothy ursine
It's all a bit
Of nature's whim
This finnish chorus line
(Sir Bees, you might try the "Bare Bones (no images)" style in the Profile page - it works for me to speed the threads along, although at the expense of color and size)
Thanx pete, been a long time since I've messed with those settings; now I'm in a snowdrift!
The hunter found
that he was no longer master
for on the ground
the bear was faster
The hunter said
oh fuggery
I hope I don't turn dead
from this bear buggery
Goes to show why you shouldn't take a dog into bear country. The scenario goes like this:
(1) Dog smells/hears bear and goes charging after it,
(2) Dog realizes that it's face to face with a big scary bear and runs back to it's pack leader for help (that's you), and finally,
(3) You're now face to face with a pissed off bear. With a little luck you'll succeed in scaring it off, since black bears tend to be wary of people.
Not to downplay what this guy went through, of course. I don't doubt that the situation was serious enough. I've had to deal with bears a couple of times and they're downright scary in person.
Did the bear bugger him?
Are there pictures of the bear buggery?
the unusual high-speed encounter is a dramatic example of what experts are seeing across the West as drought forces bears to forage farther for food while urban development pushes into formerly wild areas.
I wonder who was more surprised?
She's lucky the bear didn't bugger her!!!!
*reminds self to pack six-inch (or longer) knife for camping this weekend
Now, back the land of fantasy - bears don't bugger anything.
They have a specific season, and when it ends, no interest in sex.
The constant interest of bears is FOOD.
Heat bake everything me.
And now they heat-boogers are taking away the arctic on us, well fie on them!
I tell ye, President Gore wouldn't have done this to the planet!!!!
/for benefit of the overly-serious, the above intended facetiously .. and with dash of sarcasm, perhaps .. yum!
I miss President Gore. Never trusted him, but I miss him nonetheless.
We all missed him.
... and we get mist tea by and by ...
Proof
for Adam
Once he wrestled a bear, he said,
in a bar off-campus with eyes
glossy from lager, he wrestled
a bear. Claws and all, black fur
and the salmon of its muscles
leaping under the black fur.
Wrestled and won, he said,
the bear pinned and snorting,
pinned and one hundred pounds
heavier, with claws, with claws
and teeth, the electric blue current
of animal instinct. I was gullible
once, under kindergarten lights
with glitter and paste, building
a galaxy. A boy stole my stars
once, a bigger boy I wrestled
under the night of blackboard.
Wrestled and lost, pinned
and weeping with my back
to the carpet, with the firelfies
of glitter dazzling on my skin.
To the man who said he wrestled
a bear, wrestled and won, I said,
You're full of bear shit. But
a scar is proof and so began
the slow striptease of a pant leg
rolled to his knee. There, he said.
And his story sparkled on his flesh.
--David Hernandez
It's bees! Yay! *hugs bees*
That is an awesome awesome poem, from a poet I hadn't come across before, thank you for posting it. "the salmon of its muscles / leaping" is a tremendous image that's really going to stay with me.
'tis true
and better yet
it's very bear-y
in a world
where bears seem few.
More bears the better
Except for too many
A visualized grizzly
Is imaginary
bears dream
of beer
and seek
convenient garbage
in my compost heap
they eat bird seed
and steal the collie's chow
for chestnut trees are gone
and acorns haven't yet
begun
so bears come down the mountain
feeling hollow
every one
Casting flies for late summer trout
when above the rush of a pebbled stream
a rustling in the willows
becomes a bear
black and round, as surprised as me.
With moment's glance, a sniff then a snort,
he leaves me to my silly sport.
))) for islander!!!
astride a bay fool
I met a bear
who really had
no business there
my horse broke into
frantic sweat
and then all training
did forget
and so I sit here
on the ground
no horse no bear
for miles around
HA! Bees, wonderful!
Oh sure GramMa, run off and then bray at us!
*walks off grumbling about wimmen s'posed to be so good for ya . . .*
*looks around
Who peed in Pete's cheerios this morning?
I was laughing out loud at Bees wonderful poem, and then he accused me of being a donkey.
*wanders off, wondering if she missed something
horses don't bray? Huh - wow, they don't! Well slap my chaps and call me Sally, my apologies GramMa! Carry on whinnying then. (Horses whinny, right?)
"If you're in a situation where you've got an animal in captivity, it's probably a kindness. And certainly if they were going to leave him, then next breeding season they would have run into the same problem again," said Ellen Zimmerman.
"But the whole situation is unfortunate, and I hope it highlights for the public and for the decision makers what grizzly bears really need to survive, and that's wilderness."
This is a terrible year
for bears.
Nobody wants them. Not
nowheres.
Folk shoots them down and
cuts them up
And bears can't win for
losing, nope.
this bear tore a tent
apart
and so got shot
not for anything it did -
no one was hurt -
but for what people dreaded
it might do
if it came again
so this bear, too
by mankind's fear
was slain
Bear--a prose poem
Linda Hogan
The bear is a dark continent that walks upright like a man.
It lives across the thawing river. I have seen it beyond the water, beyond comfort. Last night it left a mark at my door that said winter was a long and hungry night of sleep. But I am not afraid; I have collected other nights of fear knowing what things walked the edges of my sleep,
and I remember the man who shot a bear, how it cried like he did and in his own voice, how he tracked that red song into the forest's lean arms to where the bear lay weeping on fired earth, its black hands covering its face from the sky where humans believe god lives larger than death.
That man, a madness remembers him. It is a song in starved shadows in nights of sleep. It follows him. Even the old rocks sing it. It makes him want to get down on his knees and lay his own hands across his face and turn away from sky where god lives larger than life.
Madness is its own country desperate and ruined. It is a collector of lives. It's a man afraid of what he's done and what he lives by. Safe, we are safe from the bear and we have each other, we have each other to fear.
O bear bear
wotcha doin' there?
underneath the freeway
givin' cars
a steely stare
[Believe the short-faced bear = the cave bear. With bears, whenever a shoulder height is given I always assume it means while the bear stands on all fours.
Cave bears if they stood erect on their hind legs were a deal taller than 6 feet. Kodiaks, grizzlies, and polar bears are taller than 6 feet, too, although one doesn't see the polar bear standing erect so as often as the other extant bears, possibly because of the ice being so flat visibility isn't all that much improved.]
O bear bear
wotcha doin' there?
underneath the freeway
givin' cars
a steely stare
[Believe the short-faced bear = the cave bear. With bears, whenever a shoulder height is given I always assume it means while the bear stands on all fours.
Cave bears if they stood erect on their hind legs were a deal taller than 6 feet. Kodiaks, grizzlies, and polar bears are taller than 6 feet, too, although one doesn't see the polar bear standing erect so as often as the other extant bears, possibly because of the ice being so flat visibility isn't all that much improved.]
O bear bear
wotcha doin' there?
underneath the freeway
givin' cars
a steely stare
[Believe the short-faced bear = the cave bear. With bears, whenever a shoulder height is given I always assume it means while the bear stands on all fours.
Cave bears if they stood erect on their hind legs were a deal taller than 6 feet. Kodiaks, grizzlies, and polar bears are taller than 6 feet, too, although one doesn't see the polar bear standing erect so as often as the other extant bears, possibly because of the ice being so flat visibility isn't all that much improved.]
Wow - the above triple is due to the Internal Server Error, I presume, which I mention on tracicle's blog. I was not aware of the problem before 5:11 UTC, but clearly there was one.
*sigh*
*disembowels bees with single swipe of mighty claws*
Bee-damned if ye do!
not curtailed
but frontally
abbreviated
the cave bear's snout
did not stick out
I wonder if this
grated?
did he crave
a longer nose
so he could better
snuff out honey or
was he more easily sated
than contemporary bears?
anyway it made his face
look funny
Honey huffing ursine beasts
Dwelling in the caverns
River-cold 3 salmon feasts
And forest fogged palavers
Along the rivers bears fret and wait
and watch the cloudless autumn sky
The rains this year are very late
and the riverbeds are nearly dry
Will clouds appear to fill the streams
or will salmon haunt bears winter dreams?
The Bear
by Susan Mitchell
Tonight the bear
comes to the orchard and, balancing
on her hind legs, dances under the apple trees,
hanging onto their boughs,
dragging their branches down to earth.
Look again. It is not the bear
but some afterimage of her
like the car I once saw in the driveway
after the last guest had gone.
Snow pulls the apple boughs to the ground.
Whatever moves in the orchard—
heavy, lumbering— is clear as wind.
The bear is long gone.
Drunk on apples,
she banged over the trash cans that fall night,
then skidded downstream. By now
she must be logged in for the winter.
Unless she is choosy.
I imagine her as very choosy,
sniffing at the huge logs, pawing them, trying
each one on for size,
but always coming out again.
Until tonight.
Tonight sap freezes under her skin.
Her breath leaves white apples in the air.
As she walks she dozes,
listening to the sound of axes chopping wood.
Somewhere she can never catch up to
trees are falling. Chips pile up like snow
When she does find it finally,
the log draws her in as easily as a forest,
and for a while she continues to see,
just ahead of her, the moon
trapped like a salmon in the ice.
"Sexual Consent", a Watch Out For The Bears production.
(This has nothing to do with bears, but what a great name for a production company!)
(Oh yeah, maybe NSFW.)
The bears of Spain
are awake again.
Spaniards like to think
their country's theirs.
But so do bears.
A bear will munch
a gingerbread house
and even a mouse
would gnaw one for lunch.
And so would I
if I were nearby.
Welcome back, bees! I've felt the lack of your poems in many threads.
A bear needs food,
And sleeps sullenly
When he can't find it.
But when suddenly
Deer are still grazing
In the middle of winter
He finds a reason
To stay awake.
First you get the honey
And then you get the bear
But where would we bee
Without the humble tree
Or famous air
o bears
think of honey
and linger a while
don't leave us
alone with
some dread crocodile
but deep in your cavern
dream on instead
of toast that's well-buttered
and stickily spread
o bears
think of honey
and linger a while
don't leave us
alone with
some dread crocodile
but deep in your cavern
dream on instead
of toast that's well-buttered
and stickily spread
"They are a charismatic species, no doubt about it," he says.
Shhh!
There's a bear
Sleeping in there!
There's no need for a ruckus
Or a dart in her tuckus
Let sleeping bears lie for all I care
Chuck the whole bunch of those "animal nuts" into the Arctic without any clothes, food, tools or weapons. Anyone who can survive a whole year gets to kill the bear personally.
BWAHAHAHA
'neddy!
Why that would be . . .
un-bearable!
/Dr._Evil_pinkie
There’s a guy who’s hiking in the woods one day when a bear chases him up a really tall tree.
The bear started to climb the tree, so the guy climbed up higher. Then, the bear climbed down and went away.
So the guy starts to climb down the tree. Suddenly, the bear returns, and this time he’s brought an even bigger bear with him. The two bears climb up the tree, the bigger bear going higher than the first. But the guy climbed even higher still, so the bears couldn’t reach him. Eventually, the bears went away.
Naturally quite relieved, the guy starts down the tree again. Suddenly, the two bears return. But this time the guy knew he was in big trouble.
Each bear was carrying a BEAVER.
Homey stole that linky directly from that OtherFilter.
And one of the poster's comments nearly made me wet my pants:
While Lawyerbear is certainly the brightest star of the current juroranimal constellation, a wonderful collection of legal minded beasts ranging from Judge Panda to Nancy Grace, I think it is important that we do not neglect those animals that came before and helped shape the modern legal world.
As Metafilter's self appointed expert on the role of animals in history, I must take it upon myself to mention those that came before lest we forget their sacrifices - their cute, fuzzily widdle sacrifices.
Judge Appleton J. Moose - Judge Moose led a storied life. Beginning as a small-time country lawyer in Maine, Appleton faced every challenge that confronted him with stoic resolve and a massive body weight. Life was hard for a moose in the waning days of the 19th century, but Appleton thrived, gaining fame and notoriety for his defense of the Chickenlicken Brothers in the "crime of the century" case Maine v. Chickenlicken. Though he lost the case and Marv and Joe Chickenlicken were sentenced to dinner, Appleton's well reasoned defense that the brothers were justified in murdering Farmer Brown as an act of self-preservation is still studied today. After a brief stint as the President of Bates College, Appleton J. Moose was appointed to the state supreme court. Upon hearing of his death in 1911, Theodore Roosevelt said, "Truly on this day we have lost the original bull moose."
Beef Wellington, PI - A discredited cop turned private investigator, Beef Wellington (seen here in a panel from the serial pulp comic based on his life) was a hard drinking rabbit from the Barrowside of Chicago. Through most of the 1930s, Beef fought to clear his name against the (literal) rats who got him kicked out of the Chicago Police. Though the authorities would not listen to him, the people and the media did. His tireless work against corruption spurred the people into voting out many of the worst of Chicago's famously corrupt politicians. Sadly, Beef died in Europe during the Norman invasion. The inspiration for modern fictitious crusaders like Serpico and Mark Fuhrman, Beef Wellington is remembered today by a small statue and a vast horde of descendants.
Judge Simon Blackturkey - The infamous "roasting judge" of the American West, Simon Blackturkey was a hard, serious bird. Too tough for Thanksgiving, Simon went west in 1867 and eventually settled in the town of Brushton in 1870. There, with the help of Wyatt Earp, he cleaned up the town with a brutal form of frontier justice. While Brushton became one of the safest and most law-abiding cities in the West, the newspapers back east were filled with sensational stories about Blackturkey's slow-cooked form of punishment. Eventually public outcry grew so loud that US Marshals were dispatched to help usher the Gobbler of Souls into retirement. Released from the harsh yoke of Judge Blackturkey's stern glare and draconian punishments, Brushton fell back into lawlessness and by 1883 was no more.
Hamstaire - Born in 1737 in France, Jacques-Marie Puffchieques, better known today by his pen-name Hamstaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, essayist, legumeist, and philosopher who campaigned tirelessly for the rights of animals and the defense of fuzzy liberties. It was Hamstaire's impassioned pleas on behalf of right to a fair trial that helped inspire America's forefathers and forepets to establish such a system in the Constitution. We should not forget his contributions to philosophy, though. "Wheekwheek, week week WHEEK!" is perhaps one of the most repeated philosophical statements in history.
Gordon Frilled-Lizard - What can be said about this powerful entertainment lawyer that Robert Evans hasn't already said in The Kid Stays In the Picture? "When I first met Gordon, he was propped up on a table at Ma Maison screeching at one of my production assistants. I had come to the restaurant not only because I was hungry, but because my assistant had called me saying that he was holding up the signing of a contract for a hellhound I wanted cast in Rosemary's Baby. So there I was, trying to get my assistant out of the line of fire - I didn't know if he was a spitting lizard or what - in the middle of this packed restaurant. And Gordon, I'll never forget this, he suddenly stops, retracts his frill and looks at me so calmly, like he hasn't been yelling for the past thirty minutes, and asks if I wanted to order dessert. That's Gordon in a nutshell, a crusader for his clients, but a real human guy beneath all the scales." After the death of Darwin the Dolphin, star of SeaQuest and Gordon's long time companion, Gordon took his own life by running out beneath a car on Route 66.
And that's just five animals I could name off the top of my head! There's also Joey Koala the Australian Ambassador to the United Nations, Tiffany Q. Ostrich the well known New York prosecutor and potential mayoral candidate, and rising star Knut the Baby Polar Bear to name a few. So while you may continue in your rightly directed adulation of Lawyerbear, please do not forget that he is but one link in a chain of legal minded animals stretching back through out history!
posted by robocop is bleeding at 7:03 AM on April 6
BRA-VO!
*applause*
)))!
Awesome BlueHorse; you are a true story-teller in the classic sense and most fine mode.
/bows head politely
Well, she steals beautifully . .
posted by robocop is bleeding at 7:03 AM on April 6
Hey!
I couldn't get the italic tags to work, but at least I posted robo's name.
Great, now you yorks have spread nasty rumors, and he's going to be after me.
*runs away
I always skip the fine print. Awesome, robocop
GramMa gets credit for her good taste and chase.
And since I don't really need to be original:
"If you're a bear, you get to hibernate. You do nothing but sleep for six months. I could deal with that.
Before you hibernate, you're supposed to eat yourself stupid. I could deal with that, too.
If you're a bear, you birth your children (who are the size of walnuts) while you're sleeping and wake to partially grown, cute, cuddly cubs. I could definitely deal with that.
If you're a mama bear, everyone knows you mean business. You swat anyone who bothers your cubs. I could deal with that, too.
If you're a bear, your mate EXPECTS you to wake up growling. He EXPECTS that you will have hairy legs and excess body fat.
Yup. I wanna be a bear."
*scratches, goes looking for picnic baskets
*hides Easter basket
Boo Boo hid the pik-a-nik basket
*is sad and hungry
Bears like honeys bunnies.
Polar Bear
Asa Boxer
Around the polynia, the polar bear mills like a vacationer
around a pool, only this bear’s pleasure is wrapped in stillness,
a sub-zero oasis in baffles of snow. The bear, who lumbering,
travels his seasons driven by hunger, who moults in the spring,
winters in the den he dug with the wide paw
now thrown over his snout to keep warm. The bear
is at rest, like a blanket of snow, recovering. His muscles
are at rest like a grenade, a land-mine, a trap-door.
His jaw is at rest, like a fox-trap, a clamp. His paws,
their non-retractable claws, his forty-two teeth, dead still
as a hunter, at rest like a bullet asleep in its chamber.
His organs are slow-burning embers, his brain, a tank of gasoline.
The bear dreams of a berry on the tip of a twig,
the weight of a seal swollen like a fruit on the claw of a branch.
His swaddle of blubber twitches at the imagined windfall,
the thump of a fist of raw flesh pounding at his icy door.
He rests, and in his sleep, he’s turning seal into bear.
The polar bear is an animal of ice who must rest
or swim for the heat that consumes him. His fur
is the fire that blazes from his charred-black skin.
The Bear by Robert Frost
The bear puts both arms around the tree above her
And draws it down as if it were a lover
And its choke cherries lips to kiss good-bye,
Then lets it snap back upright in the sky.
Her next step rocks a boulder on the wall
(She's making her cross-country in the fall).
Her great weight creaks the barbed-wire in its staples
As she flings over and off down through the maples,
Leaving on one wire moth a lock of hair.
Such is the uncaged progress of the bear.
The world has room to make a bear feel free;
The universe seems cramped to you and me.
Man acts more like the poor bear in a cage
That all day fights a nervous inward rage~
His mood rejecting all his mind suggests.
He paces back and forth and never rests
The me-nail click and shuffle of his feet,
The telescope at one end of his beat~
And at the other end the microscope,
Two instruments of nearly equal hope,
And in conjunction giving quite a spread.
Or if he rests from scientific tread,
'Tis only to sit back and sway his head
Through ninety odd degrees of arc, it seems,
Between two metaphysical extremes.
He sits back on his fundamental butt
With lifted snout and eyes (if any) shut,
(lie almost looks religious but he's not),
And back and forth he sways from cheek to cheek,
At one extreme agreeing with one Greek~
At the other agreeing with another Greek
Which may be thought, but only so to speak.
A baggy figure, equally pathetic
When sedentary and when peripatetic.
THE SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEee
*WANT**WANT**WANT**WANT**WANT*
DON'T let 'nedra, Gomi, or SMT see that!
Too much collective squee could bring this site to it's knees.
(besides, she's MINE!)
"When I get you down from there, I'm going to paddle your bear butt!"
Did somebody say "Björk Bear"?
Just don't make me drag out The Björk Song...
Oh, Björk, Björk,
Were you brought by the stork?
Oh were you created from butter and cork?
I love you so much that I act like a dork.
Oh, Björk, oh Björk, oh Björk
Repeat until insane
Oh, I did.
Little by little
roads eat away the hearts of mountains.
Fires burn through, come back in huckleberries,
trails close in August, too many bears.
Too many bears, now following avalanche chutes,
glacier lily, early spring.
Caribou in old growth spruce,
lichen,
banks of snow and fog.
Bear tracks in the mud.
Treat each bear as the last bear.
Each wolf as the last, each caribou.
Each track the last track,
Gone spoor. Gone scat.
There are no more deertrails,
no more flyways.
Treat each animal as sacred,
each minute our last.
Ghost hooves. Ghost skulls.
Death rattles and
dry bones.
Each bear walking alone in warm night air.
--Gary Lawless
Up from the creek
where a shut-in
neighbor diligently
keeps vigil
and says
a mink and otter
can still be seen
and native brook trout
cross breed with the stocked
come black bears
first one and then a second
pass by my window
silent as ghosts
not a leaf disturbed
not even rousing the dogs
head swaying
moving with secret purpose
between houses
through the yards.
Who knows what else appears
while others are off to work
or the gym
and gardens are left
to browsing deer
also emerging lightly
with the resurrected
from the soft Indian
summer fog
settled along
the creek
wisps drifting
to my window
with the ghost bears
carrying
droplets glistening
on black fur.
--Harry Walsh, "Black Bears"
What Makes The Grizzlies Dance
June and finally snowpeas
sweeten the Mission Valley.
High behind numinous meadows
lady bugs swarm, like huge
lacquered fans from Hong Kong,
like serrated skirts
of blown poppies,
whole mountains turn red.
And in the blue penstemon
grizzly bears swirl
as they bat snags of color
against their ragged mouths.
Have you never wanted
to spin like that
on hairy, leathered feet,
amid swelling berries
as you tasted a language
of early summer—shaping
lazy operatic vowels,
cracking hard-shelled
consonants like speckled
insects between your teeth,
have you never wanted
to waltz the hills
like a beast?
--Sandra Alcosser
Yes, yes!
*waltzing beeesst, me*
The Travelling Bear
Amy Lowell
GRASS-BLADES push up between the cobblestones
And catch the sun on their flat sides
Shooting it back,
Gold and emerald,
Into the eyes of passers-by.
And over the cobblestones,
Square-footed and heavy,
Dances the trained bear.
The cobbles cut his feet,
And he has a ring in his nose
But still he dances,
For the keeper pricks him with a sharp stick,
Under his fur.
Now the crowd gapes and chuckles,
And boys and young women shuffle their feet in time to the dancing bear,
They see him wobbling
Against a dust of emerald and gold,
And they are greatly delighted.
The legs of the bear shake with fatigue
And his back aches,
And the shining grass-blades dazzle and confuse him.
But still he dances,
Because of the little, pointed stick.
whilst casting mine eyes over this post (and a fine post it is!) I see that both bees and I have duplicated a couple of our favorite poems--I prefer to think of it as a way to indicate how wonderful these poems are, rather than considering it evidence of our creeping senility
Heh.
I will only say a fine poem can bear some repeating.
The Bear on the Delhi Road
Unreal tall as a myth
by the road the Himalayan bear
is beating the brilliant air
with his crooked arms
About him two men bare
spindly as locusts leap
One pulls on a ring
in the great soft nose His mate
flicks flicks with a stick
up at the rolling eyes
They have not led him here
down from the fabulous hills
to this bald alien plain
and the clamorous world to kill
but simply to teach him to dance
They are peaceful both these spare
men of Kashmir and the bear
alive is their living too
If far on the Delhi way
around him galvanic they dance
it is merely to wear wear
from his shaggy body the tranced
wish forever to stay
only an ambling bear
four-footed in berries
It is no more joyous for them
in this hot dust to prance
out of reach of the praying claws
sharpened to paw for ants
in the shadows of deodars
It is not easy to free
myth from reality
or rear this fellow up
to lurch lurch with them
in the tranced dancing of men
Srinagar 1958
--Earle Birney
Nice, islander
doedar: de·o·dar (d-där) or de·o·dar·a (-där)n.
A [fragrant] tall cedar (Cedrus deodara) native to the Himalaya Mountains and having drooping branches and dark bluish-green leaves, often with white, light green, or yellow new growth in cultivars. It is an important timber tree in India.
The more you know....
Yes, well done, islander.
Have an old family album showing deodars growing around Simla. They are also the national tree of Pakistan.
The polar bear by being white
gives up his camouflage at night,
And, yet without a thought or care,
he wanders here, meanders there,
and gaily treads the ice floes
completely unconcerned with foes.
For after dark nobody dares
to set out after polar bears.
--Jack Prelutsky, "The Polar Bear"
Polar Bear in there
Shel Silverstein
There's a Polar Bear
In our Frigidaire--
He likes it 'cause it's cold in there.
With his seat in the meat
And his face in the fish
And his big hairy paws
In the buttery dish,
He's nibbling the noodles,
He's munching the rice,
He's slurping the soda,
He's licking the ice.
And he lets out a roar
If you open the door.
And it gives me a scare
To know he's in there--
That Polary Bear
In our Fridgitydaire.
(Now we're getting silly)
There was an old person of Ware,
Who rode on the back of a bear:
When they ask'd, "Does it trot?" he said, "Certainly not!
He's a Moppsikon Floppsikon bear!"
--Edward Lear
the night the great bear
came for me
I was very whiskery
my beard had crumbs
left over from tea
he licked them off
my face and chin
and said
you smell good
to a bruin
Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear.
Fuzzy Wuzzy lost his hair.
Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't fuzzy.
Wuzee?
Flames
Smokey the Bear heads
into the autumn woods
with a red can of gasoline
and a box of wooden matches.
His ranger's hat is cocked
at a disturbing angle.
His brown fur gleams
under the high sun
as his paws, the size
of catcher's mitts,
crackle into the distance.
He is sick of dispensing
warnings to the careless,
the half-wit camper,
the dumbbell hiker.
He is going to show them
how a professional does it.
--Billy Collins
Good one, islander!
Bear loves sky
Q: What's white, furry, rides a walrus, and knocks a ball around the ice?
A: A polo bear!
Q: What's white, furry, smokes cigars, and stays up all night playing cards?
A: A poker bear!
Q: What's white, furry, likes to dance, and wears short leather pants?
A: A polka bear!
Q: What's white, furry, and has wheels on four paws?
A: Roller bears!
Q: What's white, furry, and throws balls of ice at igloos?
A: A bowler bear!
Q: What's white, furry, wears sunglasses, and lazes in the sun all summer long?
A: A solar bear!
Q: What do you get when you cross a polar bear with a seal?
A: A polar bear.
What do ye get when ye cross a toothache with a panda? ... Molar bear.
Q: What's white, furry, and throws balls of ice at igloos?
A: A bowler bear!
Q: What do you call it when the bear misses an igloo?
A: polar spare
In the Park
You have forty-nine days between
death and rebirth if you're a Buddhist.
Even the smallest soul could swim
the English Channel in that time
or climb, like a ten-month-old child,
every step of the Washington Monument
to travel across, up, down, over or through
--you won't know till you get there which to do.
He laid on me for a few seconds
said Roscoe Black, who lived to tell
about his skirmish with a grizzly bear
in Glacier Park.He laid on me not doing anything.I could feel his heart
beating against my heart.
Never mind lie and lay, the whole world
confuses them.For Roscoe Black you might say
all forty-nine days flew by.
I was raised on the Old Testament.
In it God talks to Moses, Noah,
Samuel, and they answer.
People confer with angels.Certain
animals converse with humans.
It's a simple world, full of crossovers.
Heaven's an airy Somewhere, and God
has a nasty temper when provoked,
but if there's a Hell, little is made of it.
No longtailed Devil, no eternal fire,
and no choosing what to come back as.
When the grizzly bear appears, he lies/lays down
on atheist and zealot.In the pitch-dark
each of us waits for him in Glacier Park.
--Maxine Kumin
That's lovely, bees. MK is one of my favorite poets.
The Bear on the Delhi Road
Earle Birney
Unreal tall as a myth
by the road the Himalayan bear
is beating the brilliant air
with his crooked arms
About him two men bare
spindly as locusts leap
One pulls on a ring
in the great soft nose His mate
flicks flicks with a stick
up at the rolling eyes
They have not led him here
down from the fabulous hills
to this bald alien plain
and the clamorous world to kill
but simply to teach him to dance
They are peaceful both these spare
men of Kashmir and the bear
alive is their living too
If far on the Delhi way
around him galvanic they dance
it is merely to wear wear
from his shaggy body the tranced
wish forever to stay
only an ambling bear
four-footed in berries
It is no more joyous for them
in this hot dust to prance
out of reach of the praying claws
sharpened to paw for ants
in the shadows of deodars
It is not easy to free
myth from reality
or rear this fellow up
to lurch lurch with them
in the tranced dancing of men
*ahem* ^
Er... see islander's piece, Oct 20th above, BlueHorse.
less noisy than the wind
in the small-mooned nights
bears glide downhill
inspecting trash bins
cubs clamber onto decks
knock flower pots off porches
scaring livestock and making
the valley dogs bark
Doh!
Apologies to the i-dog.
So that's why it seemed so familiar!
Ah, but as a wise man once said, a fine pome only bears repeating! (usually later on in the thread, rather than earlier, but I thought this pome was pretty FiNe! obviously.)
The bears revenge
bears are seldom
if ever replete
and bears know
people are made
of bone and meat
and the cold north's
just a great bear larder
if a bear's not interrupted
he just chews harder
To the Reader
As you read, a white bear leisurely
pees, dyeing the snow
saffron,
and as you read, many gods
lie among lianas: eyes of obsidian
are watching the generations of leaves,
and as you read
the sea is turning its dark pages,
turning
its dark pages.
--Denise Levertov
Good on the bear!
I'm all for leaving faecal greetings for politicians.
Dead goat scares recycling depot visitors
Concern over Swedish horse sex attacks
Massive boar shreds leg of Swedish elk hunter
Is it just me, or is there something strange going on with Swedish critters?
Turnabout could be fair play, ye mean? I suspect that's too human an attitude for a bear.
Says 15 bears were allowed to be hunted this past year, that's out of an estimated 2,000 bears in the entire country.
Swedish population for 2009: 9,354,462. Yielding an average density of over 20 people per Swedish square kilometer or 53 people per Swedish square mile.
Doubtless Swedish bears feel pressure as human beings expand into what was once sparsely inhabited bear country.
Or the opposite effect? I see that "Sweden's population. grew at a rate of 0.01 percent between 1980 and 1985, and since 1985 it has actually declined." The bear population, on the other hand, keeps increasing, "This occurs because of the tolerance and respect of Swedes for brown bears..."
Sleep
On the ridge above Skelp Road
bears binge on blackberries and apples,
even grapes, knocking down
the Petersens’ arbor to satisfy the sweet
hunger that consumes them. Just like us
they know the day must come when
the heart slows, when to take one
more step would mean the end of things
as they should be. Sleep is a drug;
dreams its succor. How better to drift
toward another world but with leaves
falling, their warmth draping us,
our stomachs full and fat with summer?
--Todd Davis
The Bison
Hilaire Belloc
The Bison is vain, and (I write it with pain)
The Door-mat you see on his head
Is not, as some learned professors maintain,
The opulent growth of a genius' brain;
But is sewn on with needle and thread.
Bear Song (From The Danish Of Evald)
The squirrel that’s sporting
Amid the green leaves,
Full oft, with its rustle,
The hunter deceives;
Who starts—and believing
That booty is nigh,
His heart, for a moment,
With pleasure beats high.
“Now, courage!” he mutters,
And crouching below
A thunder-split linden,
He waits for his foe:
“Ha! joy to the hunter;
A monstrous bear
E’en now is approaching,
And bids me prepare.
“Hark! hark! for the monarch
Of forests, ere long,
Will breathe out his bellow,
Deep-throated and strong:”
Thus saying, he gazes
Intently around;
But, death to his wishes!
Can hear not a sound:
Except when, at moments,
The wind rising shrill
Wafts boughs from the bushes,
Across the lone hill.
Wo worth, to thee, squirrel,
Amid the green leaves,
Full oft thy loud rustle
The hunter deceives.
--George Borrow
Bears at Raspberry Time
Fear. Three bears
are not fear, mother
and cubs come berrying
in our neighborhood
like any other family.
I want to see them, or any
distraction. Flashlight
poking across the brook
into briary darkness,
but they have gone,
noisily. I go to bed.
Fear. Unwritten books
already titled. Some
idiot will shoot the bears
soon, it always happens,
they’ll be strung up by the paws
in someone’s frontyard
maple to be admired and
measured, and I'll be paid
for work yet to be done—
with a broken imagination.
At last I dream. Our
plum tree, little, black,
twisted, gaunt in the
orchard: how for a moment
last spring it flowered
serenely, translucently
before yielding its usual
summer crop of withered
leaves. I waken, late,
go to the window, look
down to the orchard.
Is middle age what makes
even dreams factual?
The plum is serene and
bright in new moonlight,
dressed in silver leaves,
and nearby, in the waste
of rough grass strewn
in moonlight like diamond dust,
what is it?—a dark shape
moves, and then another.
Are they ... I can’t
be sure. The dark house
nuzzles my knee mutely,
pleading for meaty dollars.
Fear. Wouldn’t it be great
to write nothing at all
except poems about bears?
--Hayden Carruth
Now here's an odittee:
The Bear Hunt
Abraham Lincoln
A wild-bear chace, didst never see?
Then hast thou lived in vain.
Thy richest bump of glorious glee,
Lies desert in thy brain.
When first my father settled here,
’Twas then the frontier line:
The panther’s scream, filled night with fear
And bears preyed on the swine.
But woe for Bruin’s short lived fun,
When rose the squealing cry;
Now man and horse, with dog and gun,
For vengeance, at him fly.
A sound of danger strikes his ear;
He gives the breeze a snuff;
Away he bounds, with little fear,
And seeks the tangled rough.
On press his foes, and reach the ground,
Where’s left his half munched meal;
The dogs, in circles, scent around,
And find his fresh made trail.
With instant cry, away they dash,
And men as fast pursue;
O’er logs they leap, through water splash,
And shout the brisk halloo.
Now to elude the eager pack,
Bear shuns the open ground;
Through matted vines, he shapes his track
And runs it, round and round.
The tall fleet cur, with deep-mouthed voice,
Now speeds him, as the wind;
While half-grown pup, and short-legged fice,
Are yelping far behind.
And fresh recruits are dropping in
To join the merry corps:
With yelp and yell,—a mingled din—
The woods are in a roar.
And round, and round the chace now goes,
The world’s alive with fun;
Nick Carter’s horse, his rider throws,
And more, Hill drops his gun.
Now sorely pressed, bear glances back,
And lolls his tired tongue;
When as, to force him from his track,
An ambush on him sprung.
Across the glade he sweeps for flight,
And fully is in view.
The dogs, new-fired, by the sight,
Their cry, and speed, renew.
The foremost ones, now reach his rear,
He turns, they dash away;
And circling now, the wrathful bear,
They have him full at bay.
At top of speed, the horse-men come,
All screaming in a row,
“Whoop! Take him Tiger. Seize him Drum.”
Bang,—bang—the rifles go.
And furious now, the dogs he tears,
And crushes in his ire,
Wheels right and left, and upward rears,
With eyes of burning fire.
But leaden death is at his heart,
Vain all the strength he plies.
And, spouting blood from every part,
He reels, and sinks, and dies.
And now a dinsome clamor rose,
’Bout who should have his skin;
Who first draws blood, each hunter knows,
This prize must always win.
But who did this, and how to trace
What’s true from what’s a lie,
Like lawyers, in a murder case
They stoutly argufy.
Aforesaid fice, of blustering mood,
Behind, and quite forgot,
Just now emerging from the wood,
Arrives upon the spot.
With grinning teeth, and up-turned hair—
Brim full of spunk and wrath,
He growls, and seizes on dead bear,
And shakes for life and death.
And swells as if his skin would tear,
And growls and shakes again;
And swears, as plain as dog can swear,
That he has won the skin.
Conceited whelp! we laugh at thee—
Nor mind, that now a few
Of pompous, two-legged dogs there be,
Conceited quite as you.
the year winds down
and trees are bare
long icicles
hang down like hair
while constant woodsmoke
scents the air
wild turkey gleans
the little left
by man's machines
and black bears forage
far from Goldilocks
and all that porridge
Shameless, arrogant, ruthless and transparent greed.
I'm reminded of a paragraph from Homie's post above - Spirit Bear(July 19th)..
"...That tight-lipped custom might have been an early form of environmental protection. By not speaking of the bear, much less hunting it, the Gitga'at and neighboring bands never let word of the creature reach the ears of fur traders. Even today the Gitga'at and Kitasoo/Xai'xais people keep a watchful eye on their bears during hunting season. "It's not a good idea to come after black bear in our territory," says Robinson. "You never know. Our bears might shoot back."
I'm starting to suspect that this trend of "lazy arctic creatures" memes (like this and the baby harp seal) is a deliberate attempt to discredit them so they'd lose sympathy while their habitat melts from under them.
Maybe they'll join cats and dogs as "adoptable" fluffies.
--Emily Dickinson-- Ogden Nash, from "The Adventures of Isabel"BearCat!honeysbunnies.CatBear NapVery zen.