heart to bear.

oh, great black bear,
you remind me
that grief is large,
bear sized,
and it lumbers through dark woods
and it paws at soft earth
and it enfolds tiny cubs into it's enormous and soft, wide bellies
and defends them with a furious purpose.

oh, great black bear,
you have fallen,
mouth agape
and heart stilled
and,
in your silence,
and in you absence,
you will to me the cries of the world.

your babies wander and whine for your cover,
the world coils around itself and weeps for your leaving.

I am lost without you.

I called upon your Goddess, Artemis, and begged for her to come.
I implored her to launch arrow after arrow at the moon so that it may drench you in
protection,
so that it may strike the hearts of those who seek to end you;
to change them, undo them in some way that they would lay exposed and, all at once, see who you are, see who you are
and cast their arms down and bend their knees to serve you and your greatness.

Oh, great black bear,
she did not come.
You were brutally and mercilessly slaughtered one after another in dozens and then, hundreds.
Your bodies collided with the thundering sorrow of the earth.
She held you, took you in, kissed you into sleep
until the hunters gathered you in nets and trucks and laughed at their easy victory.

They beat their chests proudly and promised to hang you high above their mantels to show the world their failure at humanity.
You trusted their presence. You did not defend or run or seek shelter. You had no memory of this threat. You had not known the hunt for over two decades.
There was no warning to be alarmed. No time to defend.
The odds were stacked against you.
Your gentle benevolence was met with the tiny cowardice of a bullet fired into your brain.

Oh, great black bear,
you remind me that the greater is the love, the larger is the grief.
I did not know I carried the whole sky in my heart or that all the stars could dim at once.

I am lost without you.

I am bereft to share genus and species with those who have disowned their wilderness. I want to join you in the animalness and lose the language of the lost.

Artemis, where are you?
The flood of loss has come and there is no ark.
Artemis, where are you to protect the voiceless wild, who cry and cry and cry to a world deaf to their suffering?
How do I continue to laugh or live or breathe in a world filled with such devastating, justified and sanctioned evil?

she answers me to come to the grief in my own heart.
walk through it and bleed at the knees with my own heartbreak,
to sit with the sorrow of betrayal and the amnesia of nature and belonging.

oh, great black bear,
I love you so.
I grieve for the loss of you.
I belong to you.
You are alive in my heart.
you are the reminder of gentle wilderness, fierce wisdom, boldness of heart and the bigness of love.
I weep at your body and thank you for your precious life and painful sacrifice.