SEEING BEAR


Walking Petersburg Creek
the Tlingit's Seetkah Heenuk'w
across the Wrangell Narrows
from the mud-flat sloughs of Mitkof Island
I pass the last cabin
last sign
last mark on the map
& come upon brown steaming mounds of berry scat piles of gutted humpies half-chewed
fins still twitching.

Through skunk cabbage rank with growth
& devil's club waiting in ambush
its honed thorns prickly with menace
I skirt innocent gooseberries
expecting the worst
prepared around each bend for some dark hulk swatting fish
& the ultimate horror of Ursus horribilis.

Thick groves of old growth
soak up light
& squeeze out shapes
the stab of strange limbs
flicker of breeze.

No quick exit out this maze of Sitka spruce
tangled Arctic bog
muskeg carniverous with quivering insects
caught in the sundew's last embrace.

Lost in this still untamed Alaskan bush
where two-leggeds have no more weight
than the meat they carry on their bones
puffing my tin whistle like a Webelos
clapping hands
singing out of dread not joy
I keep seeing the hundred hides of Death,
its snout hairy
fangs bristling
about to attack.

Shadows leap out at me from the brush
startled
hungry
rearing up on hind legs
so near I can smell their panic
wild as fish breath
murder growling in their fierce gaze.

To run or play dead?

Bruin gone berserk & bounding towards me
slashed muscle
the snapped arm ripped from its socket
claws long as Bowie knives
eyes like smoking volcanoes
its bulk crushing me into the earth.

Seeing hot flash
my whole life engraved on a salmonberry
ground to pulp
in the molars of a steel-trap jaw.

Truth is
walking that trail
I meet no one
neither grizzly nor deer
not even a rabbit munching lichen.

The air is crisp
clouds huddled against nameless peaks.

Perhaps for the first time in my life
I am alone
with the dark shape of myself.

art goodtimes
union of street poets
vincent st. john local / colorado plateau / aztlán
kuksu brigade (ret.) / san francisco