THE OLD BEAR
THIN PLACES Collected Poems: 1974-2019 THE OLD BEAR THE OLD BEAR'S PENIS The old bear can no longer remember being a cub but his tongue, cleaning his fur, awakens the taste of uterine jelly --- slippery but spark-filled --- electric memories of the womb-cave. Now, even the gentle woof of his mother nudging him toward her rubbery teats, is indistinguishable from the wind as it roots around the stumps of old rampikes. He remembers every womb in his sky. Each is his axis. Each is his zenith. Each is his polar star. He stops, squints back between his hairy legs, to where his dick and balls dangle, warm and meaty. “Still there,” he thinks. Reassured. “Still Here.” His old bear penis has led him where his old bear brain would never go. His old bear penis is soft iron and all that he ever wanted in his life was magnetic. Sometimes it is all too much. He flops on his back in the clover field, his head ...