Bear
One
I feel you move through darkness –
a painful shadow.
The darkness of a forest – bare trees, moonless,
twigs snapping. I know you are there. Groaning,
alone in your heavy, tired body. Hunger
keeps you awake.
On my knees,
my finger traces your track, sticky in mud. I know-
where you have been.
I long to bury my face in your musky scent, know
the rhythm of your wild heart,
feed your hunger.
A twig snaps. Leaves rustle.
I feel you move through the darkness.
Two
The question is the gift. The hardpart of the journey is asking the REAL question. The question that leads to the deepest, most intolerable pain of your being. The question that is like a finger wiggling in a wound. Poke, poke, poke.
Someone once told me it this question that brings us to another birth. She said that the spiritual quest is the burning dark question. It is seeking the question that tears, rips, shatters, explodes. Then mends with the unknown – the unknowable. The gift is the most terrible question you have ever dared asked in the light of day.
Three
You dig. Feeding on bitter roots
– the awful taste of medicine.
Dirt covers your tongue. You rip apart
rotting logs. Lapping up stinging ants,
grubs, beetles. All things known
for living on the dead.
Four
It is said that when you dream of corpses and graveyards, (dreams that you leave behind in the dark and prefer not tell or write in your journal) the spiritual light within your soul will soon grow brighter. The more disgusting the corpse, putrid with decomposition, the greater the realization will be.
Five
Perhaps –
it is not me tracking you?
Maybe –
you are waiting. Waiting
for the moment when
I let go. Accept
my fate, lay down
in the cold damp leaves and
let you
find me.
Perhaps –
I am pretending.
The longing a dramatic play.
A distraction.
The knowing concealed
by a sleight of hand.
Six
She waited a long time –
to be found. No one came.
She dried up and
blew away like a leaf.
It took his keen sense of smell
to know her
as he dug up roots.
First, he uncovered her finger,
then her hand, breast, face.
He understood, how the light
blurred her vision. (Her eyes still
tender with darkness.) Because
he had slept long and dreamt deep
through cold winter after cold winter.
He knew only hunger
could wake her.
His heat, his hunger quickened her heart,
turning her blue flesh pink again.
Seven
He told me, “To awaken means to eat when you are hungry?”
“Is it ever satisfied?” I asked.
He knows her.