Cartographies

Waste Management

62 Waste Management Every night a bear comes round our house to scare up some windfall pears or to forage for fragrant garbage, trudging on soft-padded feet & slightly open-mouthed. He’s an ursine Tony Soprano, I think, seeking refuge from autumnal hungers as he forages the town’s alleys. Burly as a nightclub bouncer, near-sighted, he browses through our lives’ detritus, appearing as a refugee from day’s ample shadows. Our bear noisily chases a neighborhood cat, a disemboweler of mouses, then he eats the worst types of underworld scum— larval worms in day-glow trousers—food storehoused in a huge belly that sways to & fro when he travels. Despite his slovenly slouch, our bear’s a marvel of Mafia etiquette as he curses & wantonly carouses in the dim byways of the forest, as he sways in raveling air to snap the bark off trees with his tough teeth & calluses. We curse the furry rampages of our famished bear who’s surely gotten high on gruff power as he struggles to grip trashcan rims with iron fingers—ever roused to action by brisk whiffs of winter or our ribald catcalls. O made man, living drunk or dour, don’t settle for trudging on soft-padded feet, staying tight-hearted— know, as I do, how fear & desire drive us all. Look how nightly a bear circumambulates our lives with such ardor. ...