April 25: William Matthews, "The Bear at the Dump," Hibernation

The Bear at the Dump

by:  William Matthews

Amidst the too much that we buy and throw   

away and the far too much we wrap it in,   

the bear found a few items of special

interest—a honeydew rind, a used tampon,   

the bone from a leg of lamb. He’d rock back   

lightly onto his rear paws and slash

open a plastic bag, and then his nose—

jammed almost with a surfeit of rank

and likely information, for he would pause—

and then his whole dowsing snout would   

insinuate itself a little way

inside. By now he’d have hunched his weight   

forward slightly, and then he’d snatch it back,   

trailed by some tidbit in his teeth. He’d look   

around. What a good boy am he.

The guardian of the dump was used

to this and not amused. “He’ll drag that shit   

every which damn way,” he grumbled

who’d dozed and scraped a pit to keep that shit   

where the town paid to contain it.

The others of us looked and looked. “City   

folks like you don’t get to see this often,”   

one year-round resident accused me.

Some winter I’ll bring him down to learn   

to love a rat working a length of subway   

track. “Nope,” I replied. Just then the bear   

decamped for the woods with a marl of grease   

and slather in his mouth and on his snout,   

picking up speed, not cute (nor had he been   

cute before, slavering with greed, his weight   

all sunk to his seated rump and his nose stuck   

up to sift the rich and fetid air, shaped   

like a huge, furry pear), but richly

fed on the slow-simmering dump, and gone   

into the bug-thick woods and anecdote.

_______________________

It's starting to feel like spring has finally arrived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  A week ago, we were digging out from a winter storm that dumped over two feet of snow on some places.  That new snow is almost all gone now.  With seventy-degree weather in the forecast for next week, I'm thinking that a lot more of the snow is going to be gone by next Wednesday.

A friend was walking a week or so ago, and she encountered a black bear stumbling through the woods.  She videoed the creature, who looked like my son when he wakes up in the morning, shaking his head, bumping into things.  Obviously, the bear had just crawled out of hibernation.

Saint Marty's friend didn't hang around long enough to find out if the bear was hungry.

June 1: Spring Awakening, Janeen Rastall, "Hibernation"

I am sitting in my office at the university.  It is almost 7 p.m., and I have two more hours to kill.  My daughter has a dance class until 9 p.m. this evening.  It wasn't so bad when I taught on Wednesday nights.  However, since the end of the semester, I find myself with a whole lot of time on my hands on mid-week nights.

I'm not complaining.  I rarely have alone time.  Usually, I'm working or teaching after I'm done working and teaching.  Not tonight.  I just took a break from my blogging, walked to a window in the building that faces Lake Superior.  Looked down.  Saw a deer standing in a copse of trees.  It muscles were wound tight.  I could tell it was ready to bolt.  Sure enough, a few seconds later, a car came rolling by, and the deer fled.  I barely saw it leave.  It was there one moment, and then it was gone.

Seeing a deer in a relatively populated area is not uncommon in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  On my way to work every morning, I am always alert for the flash of deer in my headlights.  (This habit is a byproduct of a run-in with a Bambi one morning; I totaled my Mercury Sable for which I had just made the final loan payment.)

Yes, we Yoopers live side-by-side with wildlife.  Deer.  Rabbits.  Skunks.  Raccoons.  Bear.  We even identify seasons of the year by animals.  The normal Yooper male, for example, spends a good portion of autumn preparing for November 15:  opening day of deer season.  (Some local school districts even cancel school on this day.)  And then there's the spring awakening of the skunk, when you rise on trash collection morning to find your garbage bags eviscerated on your front lawn, musk still clinging in the air.

One October evening, as I was driving down a dirt road, a black bear came crashing through the trees.  He was on a dead run and didn't even pause to consider the green Geo Metro barreling toward him.  He was huge, shoulders higher than the hood of the car.  If I had been going faster (or been a few feet closer), I would have had a vehicular close encounter of the ursine kind.

That's life in the U. P.  Rabbits in your backyard (sometimes a stray moose, a la Northern Exposure).  Like the animals, Yoopers are very much conditioned by the seasons.  We are active in the spring and summer months.  When the leaves start changing in September, we slow down, prepare for the cold weather.  In winter, we hole up in our houses, where we have stored food to sustain us.  We hibernate and watch The Voice in our caves.

Saint Marty thinks the Poet of the Week knows a little about this subject . . .

Hibernation

by:  Janeen Rastall

At the shoe store,
you slip your sock into the metal sandal
to measure yourself heel to toe.
In the mirror, all you see are feet,
bearers of a hidden weight.

Slide your foot into this mud print,
heel to this heel.
Spread your toes and let your arches drop.
File your nails to fine points.
Shamble from shadow to oak shadow.
Find a tree hollow and scar the bark.