The Bear

 I know there is a bear out there
Although I have never seen it.
My part-time inner sleuth
Has been busily sifting through the clues
Ever since my neighbor Susan put that image in play.
She said, as casually as one can talk about a bear,
“Did you hear about the black bear that was seen
Down the street?  Ya, the folks at Adam’s Garden of Eden spotted it.
Six feet tall.  Pretty big.  Ya.”
This moment, these thoughts
Were like dumping the contents
Of a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle on the dining room table.
Let the games begin!
Clue one, and the biggest piece so far: 
My bird feeders have been emptied overnight
For the past week or so.  Especially the suet.
If I was a bear, the feeder food seems like an open invitation.
Midnight snack, come and get it!
Rendered fat and sunflower seeds, so tempting!
For several days I have been secretly accusing raccoons
Those midnight ramblers
Those masked banditos
So maybe they can be on my suspect list.
But how could they reach the suet, strung from a cable
Hung from a high branch?
About six feet off the ground?
I thought I was clever
Until recently.
But now the bear has been placed in the suspect lineup.
Excuse me, number 4, Mr. Black Bear,
Would you mind standing on your hind feet
And reaching up?
Ah! See?
Mr. Bear could reach the suet, for sure!
But how to prove it,
Where’s the evidence?
No witnesses
No tracks on the ground
No hair or scat.
I needed to catch him in the act.
“What you need is one of those infrared trail cameras
Like hunters use,” my friend Karen suggested.
Hmmm.  Maybe, just maybe.  
They have used those to take all the crystal clear
Photos that we’ve seen of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, right?
Right?
So off to Amazon Prime I go.
All hail Amazon for the work they do
In supporting our dreams and nightmares
Of monsters and mythical creatures
And maybe even bears in our backyards.
So my trail camera is on its way, shipped one day
And tomorrow night
When the moon is low, I’ll know:
Do black bears still roam
Sucking suet feeders dry?
And stirring my imagination?
While giving me more than a moment pause
To puzzle and ponder and wonder wild.
Tomorrow after dark, I may know.

Jumping Spider

It is a warm spring morning
A steady gentle breeze wafts and drafts
Pushing its way across the treetops
And settles in my lap
The pollen and particles
That temporarily adorned the nearby branches
Flowers high above so out of sight
Hidden in the great waves of green
Broken beauties decorate the day
Drop their offerings
Gifts to the ground.

My reptilian brain drives me to bask a bit
Armchair and coffee
I am ready for the nine o’clock show.
Right on cue
A jumping spider appears
And eight eyes wide open
It inspects the knuckles of my hand
Resting on the arm of my chair.
Furry fleshed bristle
Onyx eyes gleam
It raises its abdomen and spinnerets
And streams downwind
Jets of glowing silk
Cross my chest and lap
And I am captured in this moment.

Peace Puzzle

A Momentary Lapse in Judgment

As I read the sign in front of the church, I felt myself being sucked back into the black hole of pessimism that has been welling-up in me for the past decade or so.  For a while, I thought it was acid reflux, and indeed, Nexium actually helped.  

 For a while. Living better through chemistry.

The roadside sign implored, “Cherish each other and creation.”  Apparently, you don’t have to sit in a pew to get a sermon.  I once went to a church that assembled at a drive-in- movie theatre.  Passion plays on Sunday morning, passion pit on Saturday night.

The subtext implies that these are things we should be doing but we are not.  Perhaps this is the true epitaph that should be carved on the gravestones of the latter-day world: “We could have done better…”

But we didn’t.

We are drowning in the murk and detritus of our lesser angels, and are surely vulnerable, as are all life forms, to the strictly enforce rules of the evolutionary road.  This comes as no surprise for many; slings and arrows…slings and arrows.  For a few of us it is a bit of a shock, being buffered by home grown avarice. It was a nice ride while it lasted, the sign might read post-apocalypse, in front of The Church of I Told You So. 

I’m not ready for this eventuality.  I was born and ill-bred with the great American, great western dream, spawned post war; such a foolish dream. John and Paul wrote prophetically, although not likely their intention:

“…I've got to admit it's getting better (Better)
A little better all the time (It can't get no worse…)

Pop, opt!

Hopeful as these platitudes seem, it can always get worse.  At least in the short run.  And help me if you will to define short run:  What hour, what day?  What era, what epoch? What longitudinal lifeline?

We are on the cusp of many dark days of pessimism, followed by boundless stretches of night.  The pendulum will swing long and wide.

And as for me, I wish not to be prophetic.  I wish not to sooth say the end times, (which I saw on the roadside sign of another Pentecostal church:

“Are we in end times?”)

Give me that ol’ roadside religion!

I’d like to disbelieve these ideas.  I’d like to be buoyed by optimism.  But facts tell true another story.

It seems, I don’t burn hot enough. My shields are down, I don’t possess the greater glory of egotism that might just keep the climatologists and sociologist from knocking at my door.  “Ding-dong, doomsday calling! 

And I must admit, when all hope is gone, that it’s not an altogether bad thing.  It’s just a thing.  The next thing. 

It was a good run wasn’t it?

“…It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine…” Michael Stipe, et al.

It leaves me vulnerable (haven’t we always been?) to those slings and arrows, large and small, while still resting in the residue of whimsy and wonder?

“I reject your reality and substitute my own.”  -The Dungeonmaster.

I do what I can, while we are being consumed, absorbed, amoeba like, into the next moment, both terrifying and glorious.

Meanwhile,

Moment by moment…

-Paul Sanderson

May, 2019