The Recession

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.