|
| |
A
Thirst That's Partly Mine
by Liz Ahl
2008, 25 pages
Winner of the 2008 Sapering
Hol Press Chapbook Competition.
"The
Bear"
The
black bear on my deck at 3 A.M.
will not be rushed away from what she came
for—
one plastic tube of birdseed carelessly left out
overnight during
the season of her greatest hunger.
Except for the occasional glint of fur-shine
she’s all shadow in the crisp, liquid moonlight. I
tap on the glass, the pinch a dreamer asks for,
dimwitted by her appearance,
disbelieving
the fifteen-foot climb she had to make
for mere handfuls
of seed. She’s got the feeder
in her jaws, easily, like a dog on a bone,
and starts back down, rump first, over the edge, thick
claws scraping against the grain of the planking,
against her own growing
winter weight.
She has to let herself drop the last feet to the ground,
and when I know she’s landed, I creep out for a look.
Now I’m a threat, through
the glass and into her turf,
so she tosses a hoot up into the chilly air. A
rough rustling from the yard’s edge, snap of branches,
and then, one each,
from two trees, her apple-round cubs
thump onto the grass, like the very fruit
they’re full of.
They bumble into the brush together. In my head,
a stern
voice recites the sermon about the ferocity
of mothers, what they’ll do for
their young, why
I shouldn’t have opened the slider. She was hungry —
she weighed risk, parked
her cubs, didn’t ever see me
as a genuine threat. I was just a ghost beyond
the glass,
a random tapping at the edge of her consciousness,
small splinter
in hunger’s gaunt side. I was uninvited.
I should have been sleeping, but
instead some
fearful shadow in me was waiting to be scared awake
by noises, by suspicion.
Maybe I should have rolled over
and sunk back down into dreaming. She’s plodding
in that direction — the long sleep calling her
to store up for another winter.
Any creature might be
pushed by desperation, animated by gut fundamentals
to follow hunger’s taut rope through darkness. |
| Purchase
this SHP Title |
Using
PayPal:
Through
the SHP Office:
Call
1.914.332.5953 to order over the phone
or fill out the Order Form and mail
it to
Slapering Hol Press
300 Riverside Drive
Sleepy Hollow,
NY 10591
or fax it to
1.914.332.4825
|
| Audio
Sample: |
As
read by the author,
Liz Ahl
|
| About
the Author: |
Liz
Ahl
| |
