Livestream

Yellowstone National Park

I watch schools of salmon        lend themselves with pleasure

to the mouths of grizzly bears        when everything that's supposed to sit

circled quietly around me starts shouting,        the fat brick of hash

I told my friend not to let me keep,        not even if I kowtow at the knees for it,

the pair of garish rotisserie chickens        peppered with rosemary gossiping

in the fridge, the little stipples of spinach        I bestow gorgeous honorifics upon

before they're sluiced from my teeth        & swept down the drain.

It's when the video teems, buffers,        & leaps forward in time, losing time

as it moves, that I misplace the bear        I had come to love for the way

she carries what remains of the fish        after they've been fleeced

of meat notched in her auburn fur        like gaudy opals. Falling for

how she lumbered & caterwauled, lifting        her snout to goad whatever wind the river

carried with it, I felt myself, much like        the thin-beaked heron entering the water

without breaking the water, shocked        at how easily I can sneak through this life.

The dolly cants the camera & the camera        cants my eye past the blotch of vetch

blurred on the shoreline, yards beyond        the center of the lens, just another perennial

I'd find listing & losing its color        in my mother's garden. Foraging for

my bear by the strings of bone        that bangle the thick muscles of her wrists,

I wonder what the lens would find        if it spun around & racked its focus:

the way I bump my snout up against a big        green button when it's feeding time,

how I lick my coat until it sparkles        & I can finally purr myself to sleep.

When I was kept in a cage        because I couldn't gather language

to cradle the reasons I wanted to leap        into the mouth of a beast

that would catch & destroy me,        my mother sent missives

repeating be good & don't die,        among other dreadful spondees.

When the lock was unlatched,        & a clear, blue sky pinned my pupils,

I should've been better, I will        get better, I still say, a sentence

I scan for its stresses, finding nothing        but my plain as bone sadness.

It would be wise to ape the species of duck        I don't know the name of, that floats

past the bears it confuses for hills,        hopscotches between slipstreams of blood,

ducks its bill below the surface,        & slides down the long arc of a waterfall.

I push my face flush against the screen        to glimpse the better place it's tumbled to

when a window pops up & tells me I can have        twenty more minutes, but only if I pay for it.