My newspaper shields me as I sit alone, silent among others
together, close around marble tables, their coffee cold with talk.
I read that, in Los Angeles, an elderly bear was found soaking
in a suburb hot tub. A photo shows him passive, sitting sedated
in a cage, while officials seek a zoo. He can’t survive on his
own anymore. His teeth are broken from foraging in garbage cans.
The window holds us close in comfortable identity,
a fragile, clear division taped thick with notices of possibility,
echoing all our unarticulated dreams of transformation.
Beyond, into traffic four lanes deep, a deer leaps,
propelled from the cliff above
by her own infinite motion,
born of gravity and the wind, legs buckling, as she
hits concrete, feet sliding under her,
and I tense myself against the inevitable
hard-soft sound of metal hitting flesh,
as I watch her plunging through and past,
until she vanishes up into the hill across,
still thick with oak and blackberries.
A waitress, all in black,
with red curls tied at the nape of her neck, lights candles
in the deepening dusk. Her silver bracelet,
circling a dragon tattooed on her upper arm,
reflects their warming flames,
while outside, cars transform themselves into
patterns of moving lights, detached from substance,
but never direction.
No point in hurrying. Already the dexterous,
long-clawed raccoon, intent on filling his belly,
will have crawled through my kitchen window.
If I arrive before he finishes,
he must be pushed, snarling, out with a broom.
When, at last, our own species faces
it’s own approaching extinction,
I feel assured he will do nothing to save us.
***
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