You, red bear, come down from the mountain
to sit at the rim of a yellow hole in the grass.
The bees circle
and the children climb
out the windows with caution.
In the city people make their windows
tight against the coming of the day.
You write a language
that can be read only in the leaves
circling slowly on the river’s back.
Is that love under your nails,
love the color of a star nova
beneath the waterborne leaves
in the evening when the towns
open their doors to the shadows
loud with crickets, fearing the city.
Maybe the cave woman
had you in her mind
when she wrote a list in the stone
with ink made from crushed fruit,
things she would make days to come,
outlines of objects she brought
in baskets, bags, and boxes
that harbored the light and smell
of a world whose border is made
when day turns into night, Mexico
maybe, Iran, some other country
where chickens run when the rain falls
or when the ground goes
luminous gray under eclipse.
In the open country where a million
suns flood the hills and fill
the meadow bees with aches
for honey and wine, fear
in you diminishes into distance,
the sunset bones of the tree
limbs and the drip of water
on cave glass where dark
reflects dark and presses
to the walls to hang and shake like bats.
The children cry when you, bear,
rise and follow the lower tree line,
lumbering to the road.
They want to ride you. They want
to make themselves whole and good.
The print your hand makes in the grass
is their memory of sun
and starburst, a yellow leaf
turning on a river toward the sea.
