I think I see a bear
Down
On the icy snow frozen street
Police cars with turning beacons
At a distance of caution
One figure
Through my binoculars crouches
Creeps up to the immobile
Lump of brown, with a black smaller … head?
Who lies motionless on the cold ground.
The officer approaches like a Nintendo figure
Jerky hesitant, gun drawn
He kicks the large lump
Nothing
Backs away jerky, quickly
Why would a bear get up in this cold weather
And come to town?
Why would I?
My heart hurts of it.
My neighbor comes home and informs me
That he thinks
It is a bail of hay.
Later a fire truck hauls “it” away.
The world is upside down, barely functioning by chaos
Today
But
For a good time to come so the prophets call.
Drawing a gun on a bail of hay
On an icy snowbound street
In the ghetto of Missoula, Montana?
It must have been a bear
It was maybe a meth bust.
Death either way.
Maybe it didn’t happen at all. Not to me.
Clearly the alienation of this frozen world is complete.
The future so uncertain for all, that I celebrate the leveling
The equalizing
But weep for a lost livelihood as the death of a friend
I am told the farther down I go I must pray:
May I take on the most poverty of all
That you may not suffer.
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