the Bear fell in the love with Night

    and Night fell in love with the Bear

and the two ran away through all disapproval to the sea

    & sailed away in a day for a thousand years maybe

they say out there still               

    there there can you imagine them running together

like unlikely clouds the Bear a coat patch

    sewn on the Sea an ebon-hulled schooner

or the cussing storm-cauled captain wheel gripped

    in his teeth and Night the coattail sails that

transport so beautiful stars topple down down

    to drowse in Her billowed lateens

and snore like bells.

    the Bear had a nose for wind and

Night an eye for destinations      

    just careless enough they made the monthly

poems just careful enough they were

    never caught. if you believe their lovemaking

brought storms then believe that in their thigh-twined

    collapse the world grew so calm

that Death wept.

    they were as happy as two things can be

when they forget what they were supposed to be go

    away and begin to mean something else. Reader be

careful don't stumble and die doubting this idiotic

    love or you'll spend your next life crying

on the bottom of the sea. some things are true

    only when they are brought together like

wires in the red metal of your chest: Bear, Night.

    Love is it like that an unnatural

 pairing of spring hunger and blind faith.

    it is where all of the good stories come

from the impossible we go to when we

     finally realize the strange paths

of the heart are not ours to determine

     but to take.

it is amazing
the instruments 
we are

the parts
all attached

the way day and night
are  hinged to one another

the guitars of our bodies
the arrows of our 
toes

the long animals
of fingers

how in each of us
the power

to hold 

to shape

the O of a kiss
truth
and its oval word

the tip of flame

on a finger

reaching
into another soul

it
is okay to stop defending this 

tiny
yard of earth or tiny thought or 

little
spark you think your life

depends
on. enough go turn sideways 

into
the light sideways like the Old Ones 

who
burned down their houses to 

live
in the sun be still as a stick as the heron

who
has mastered this art of standing

slipping
between the beats of time and breath

breathe,
friend, the way the ocean breathes. 

why
fight for the air when its everywhere cool 

body
rubs wind off your watery back why

struggle
with time when you have keyed its

tall
blinds why pretend to be a target when 

your
body is a home carpentered of light?

It must be that in another life I think but do not know who I was

            a stranger to me now but there was a fire a burning down of

 things and in the bars of shadows cast by the flames that very night amidst

            some enormous grief gravel imbedded in my knees was asked by the night

 or something in the night like a hot coal hidden in a blanket like a star

            beneath an eyelid what do you want and I said I thought I wanted this

 earth and all that I have been told it promises the green shoots that harden

            bones the twigs that turn into boards then houses the single tulip

 of love in the shape of hips and thigh what other kiss did you think a man could want?

            and now what? the voice asked and I said ash and I said

 dust this is what everything is made of isn't it and the voice said and what

            else? and I had nothing more to say but that night I leaped

 into the dark and became a bear and lived so ninety-nine lives ninety-nine

            springs awoke hungry as a desert walked on my hands through summer

 devouring everything ninety-nine autumns drowsy on honey and berries

            went down into the cave of my slumber winterless were my dreams and

 now a man again or so I pretend a reprieve nearly half a century perhaps a bit

            longer if lucky and each year especially autumn when the light

 as if spilt from a glass falls to the other side of the earth and the night

            opens its long eyes and snow and ice arrive to inhale in the last

 blade of grass the question returns what else? what else? I have been

            begging the answer have drawn flint across the gash of my raw question

 have wandered house to house body to body occupation to occupation all the

            while wearing the lumbering shadow of a bear not a man's and

 now as summer braces its shoulder northerly I am ready to answer

            something else a third thing but I will not tell it to you

 or anyone (you too have been asked have questions have shapes you must

            carry and be carried by) it is enough that I know will die and live and die

 and live again whispering it the way the earth whispers to seeds quietly and the

                 bear I have been what of it? let it go in peace I say let it go to the place

 where all bears must go.