Great Bear

When the day pours down in a silken glaze    the great bear walks up       and up each milk-white step of noon leaving the restless woods    and her green cave of weeds       emptying her pockets of berries, roots, and grubs climbing past the crows in the lemony air    above the hornbeam and chestnut oak       between cloud and mountain. She slowly shakes aside the heavy rug of her fur    and muscle of her body       letting go memories of grievous winters    boom and howl of the wind and weight       of each cub, before it was born wending up the stairs of the night chorus    into the embrace of grandmother sky,       with bones as light and fierce as polished suns. I tell you this so you won't be surprised    if the scent of pine sap drifts down       with milkweed, and memories of wild fat summers — if you too    are stretched out in the field watching       for the rise of the great mother. Remember your enchantment:    every day is a doorway       every moment is the world revealing itself. Death is not waiting at the end,    but is here, vibrating with promises       of wider horizons and songs in different languages. We are not waiting, but are    constant and becoming as we climb       listening for learning what the river wants    and how the plants became healers —       letting go of our bodies slowly, carrying nothing else into    the black and silver night       but the great shining we came from, and are.

Watched by crows and friend to salamanders, Lisa Creech Bledsoe is a hiker, beekeeper, and writer living in the mountains of Western North Carolina. She is the author of two full-length books of poetry, Appalachian Ground (2019), and Wolf Laundry (2020), and she has new poems out or forthcoming in American Writers Review, The Main Street Rag, Jam & Sand, The Writer’s Cafe Magazine, Cabinet of Heed, and Front Porch Review, among others.