Somehow a bear survives

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.