The introduction to Dexter Roberts’s book, Imagine a World, describes him as an Uncle Sam lookalike with “rail-thin, long legs, white hair, and piercing eyes,” save that he’s a practicing Buddhist and a friend of Gary Snyder. For several decades, he taught at the University of Montana’s Wilderness Program. Here’s a poem about a bear, a subject that is a perennial favorite of mine.
…HE HELD THE HONEY BOTTLE IN HIS
TEETH AND I FELT WELL AGAIN
Looking to the past…
In 1989, end of May,
just back from India
and sick in the bowels with what
no Westerner’s microscope
could identify,
I woke at mid-afternoon
from a sleep induced
by fasting away stress,
to the sound of
the metal garbage can
out by the shed
being upended.
Bang Bang, it said.
I went outside. And there was a young bear
next to a middle-aged
pine,
sifting through a
sack of
stuff (he found
the plastic honey bottle
shaped in the image
of Smokey, he set it aside).
So I walked up to him,
the front door open
to my rear,
and told him to get
lost.
But he wouldn’t
give in to a loud
threat, instead
embraced the tree,
leaving claw marks,
as if to say, This
space between us, over to the
garbage can,
is mine,
you pale, hairless
thing.
So I threw rocks
at him, until he turned and walked
slowly up the hill,
disappearing in the maple
and willow shrubs.
The young doug fir
cast shadows
to match the color
of his coat…
