all night the bear is coming down the mountain

bound for the strong river

running down to the distant city

but still she comes,

swimming, dripping, shaking her fur in the Tivoli

mud banks,

loping through pussy willow, rose brier,

inhaling honey suckle,

clambering up the old Lenape trails,

snuffling under the logs,

eating the glittering orange salamanders,

overturning buckets,

padding across deserted decks,

crossing roads unseen because of her dark fur

I am waiting for her because we have been waiting

for years.

when she comes out of the woods,

she pauses, she has eaten up all the past

and in this world there is no room for either one of us

fine creature, the last of her kind

they can kill her

but no bullet can take her down

we cannot live together or apart

and overhead, stars lost to haze

the old rumble of a jet bound

west to east, blinking red

bloodshot eyes and the entirety of the black night's

pupil

the last and only and lovely

unreachable black

lightning came last night

and I doused the last lights

back where we wait

in the house at the edge

I always wanted a moment more

to study and praise

the glamor of exposed

tree trunks

snatched from the safety of the dark

but I'm always off guard,

always late.

they say that what we say

is always behind,

late on arrival.

the past is a rickety venture

the future never shows up

and the present has questionable

antecedents

after all that, last night the rain came

it's a good way to sleep

and I'm only assuming,

I'm just not sure

the bounty of visiting fire flies

were extinguished.

it's like the streets around Madison Square Garden

after the performance under the spotlights

at 4 a.m.; there are a few people tucked

in cardboard homes

otherwise everyone went back to New Jersey

back to the Island

back up the trains to Putnam and Rockland

and Orange.

who owns light

and the dark moment

we always wait before,

in between the flashes

at the news

fathers cling to mothers

and sons may or may not show their feelings

but the shoulder of your dad

is where you may bury your own face

letters and conversations

the burning of days that cannot return

waver distinctly in the pit's bright heat

the last time they can be distinguished

before settling anew, colonizing the meadows

green nearby

what was once theory colonizes us

and now has come to pass

for all we know in this new era,

we have not come so very far