Bears of Cheyenne Canyon
This October a host of silent bears
have come to Cheyenne Canyon
like never before.
Tonight’s canyon bear almost looks like
Miles Davis from his In A Silent Way days
—black face, black eyes, brown skin tints
and a black mass surrounding his huge,
shiny head, making it appear
as if the bear had some Round
Midnight riffs in his walking away sound,
as if Miles with his late night horn
was playing rhythms endlessly
into this mammalian’s dark
dancing path of experience
and crossing sounds of the night
into sentences
before ears or bears
know best where to bend.
Even this sleepy, city kid
can watch those quiet
lumbering swatches of huge darkness
kindly cross his asphalt street.
In their hungry-eyed stares of wonder,
he thinks these creatures could eat him so easily,
though they want only to rifle and gobble garbage
and amaze us with their ghostly humility
of what the hibernating winter in their blood
needs to become—some dreaming scene
of humans lumbering away, walking
on their tongues and tasting
the truth of earth.
—Will Hochman
____
from Freer (Pecan Grove Press 2006)