a dying bear

the summer held him

warmly as a mother might

kept his muscles taught teeth

clean eyes focused and brilliant

then rain came

falling slowly with fir needles

from the higher boughs

the afternoons became hazes

stones in the roadside grass

chipped his teeth

in the night he either walked

or stared. after the eighth

day of rain he walked the high river

but got tired before daylight

rested in a cedar hollowed by fire

while outside the wet darkness shivered

then the snow came but no sleep

on the first night he stood in a clearing

near a dead hunter's cabin

sharp ice cracked around his lips

one eyelid frozen closed

ribs like dead sticks under his fur

he stared at the darkness on the edge

of the clearing and it closed in

he saw the ocean once when he was younger

it was the only other time

he'd ever dreamt there was a god