The Black Bear Inside Me
All summer I elude them—
who think they want to see my
three cubs someone
said she spotted
on the gravel road that severs
thick woods
near a row of mailboxes,
by the stream;
who take the path down
and up the mowing
with baskets on their arms,
fearful
when they hear me
huff or blow.
They know
I will outrun, outswim,
outclimb, bluff-charge,
and in winter
drop my heart rate
from 40 to 8 beats a minute
in my den of
wind-thrown trees.
They know they will take
me in the September
kill, harvesting
my kind with dogs
and guns, and they know
we haven’t taken one of them
since 1784 in this state
where 5,000 black bear
clear carcasses
of deer and moose
and sow
fruit trees and shrubs.
They know they need us
who are so like them
our numbers tell
the story, yes, the land
that supports us
supports them; without us,
adapted to scarcity and woodland
loss, they’re going down.
Liberal Arts Research Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Penn State, Robin Becker has published seven collections of poems, five in the University of Pittsburgh Press Poetry series. Her most recent, Tiger Heron, appeared in 2014. Becker serves as Contributing and Poetry Editor for The Women’s Review of Books for which she writes a column on contemporary poetry called “Field Notes.”