in this remnant lowland forest—
he’s the stuff of local legends,
scrounging enough blackberries
and road trash to sustain him
in his leafy cell imprisoned by suburbia.
Mothers spot him when apples ripen
or summer thirst drives him
to the damp miracle
of evening sprinklers.
They scream as his hairy shoulders
slope back into the cage of those last twenty acres.
A few neighbors want to save him—
as if by carting him off to the mountains
they might justify the lush lives
of our neat backyards,
the plastic forts and trampolines,
the forests we’ve forsaken.
Imagine his panic,
frantic paws scrambling from speeding cars,
the startling brightness of headlights.
Poor brute, with shaggy, matted fur
and weeping sores, reduced to the indignity
of barking dogs and children’s rocks.
Commuters often spot him
creeping along the edge of hemlocks
or standing upright, nose in the air,
sniffing a sweet breeze
from memory’s primeval forest.