the mountain’s green sea in the month of May.

With each stroke, claws ransack logs, capsize rocks,

tear the sides of speckled fawns to fill the ravine

of his ravenous need, chasing away the dream

inside long winter months: a beetle that eats

from the inside, stringing muscle and skinning

him to a skeletal twin. Within this embrace

the hot smell of a sow bear draws him out

of himself and into the space she opens:

acceptance helping him to understand

what it means to join another, to make another

life that will outlive him. As she must

the sow casts Ursus outside the fence

of her love to protect her cubs.

We’ve heard stories about those thrown

overboard, set adrift. I’ve seen Ursus’s head

among laurel flowers, face wreathed in pink

as he searches the horizon for a small black

body that looks like him, rowing the deepest

troughs of green, the overturning waves

in the highest branches that splash in the wind.