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DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE:
The Bear Has More to Say
I’ve heard about these things
You call Teddies--
Little totems of me.
You give them to your young,
And they sleep with them
In their small dens,
And love them the way I loved my twins.
Then when they grow big,
They hurl their Teddies into some dark place
Some cave-like place where humans keep
The coats that they devise
To cover their naked skin.
None of the humans hear
The crunching sounds.
There is no food in this dark place
And the winter resting time is far away.
Even a totem needs food,
And the Teddies, abandoned,
Eat the sticks that used to be parts of trees,
The sticks that hold the humans’
Many coats in rows like a forest of fur.
These are human things
That seem so strange to a bear,
Like throwing your totems
In a dark corner to die.
I never abandoned my twins.
Through the second long winter
They slept beside me
As the snows piled high and higher,
And the wolf wind howled loud enough
For us to hear it in our dreams.
Their breath was a comfort to me,
And together we three
Held some of the cold at bay.
When I walked away from them
On a day of yellow sun
And clean green pines,
They called to me--
The two little growlers in high branches--
I left them feasting in a cottonwood
And my haunches felt heavy
As I quickly covered ground.
I heard a robin. Then a meadowlark.
It was time, and this had to be.
I knew they had learned everything--
How to pick up your scent,
How to turn away from your morbid doings,
How to spot the silvery shine of fish
In the cool water.
I looked back one last time,
Then headed upstream.
It was not an abandonment.
I still feel their nuzzles
Near my belly,
Still remember the soft padding
Of their paws.
Their scent will stay with me forever,
And I will always think I know
Just where they are,
Even though as female and male
They will follow
Two different paths.
It is not the same
As tossing a totem into darkness
Then forgetting that it ever was.
Something sacred in the forest
Stays sacred
Even past a bear’s
Final sleep.
You call Teddies--
Little totems of me.
You give them to your young,
And they sleep with them
In their small dens,
And love them the way I loved my twins.
Then when they grow big,
They hurl their Teddies into some dark place
Some cave-like place where humans keep
The coats that they devise
To cover their naked skin.
None of the humans hear
The crunching sounds.
There is no food in this dark place
And the winter resting time is far away.
Even a totem needs food,
And the Teddies, abandoned,
Eat the sticks that used to be parts of trees,
The sticks that hold the humans’
Many coats in rows like a forest of fur.
These are human things
That seem so strange to a bear,
Like throwing your totems
In a dark corner to die.
I never abandoned my twins.
Through the second long winter
They slept beside me
As the snows piled high and higher,
And the wolf wind howled loud enough
For us to hear it in our dreams.
Their breath was a comfort to me,
And together we three
Held some of the cold at bay.
When I walked away from them
On a day of yellow sun
And clean green pines,
They called to me--
The two little growlers in high branches--
I left them feasting in a cottonwood
And my haunches felt heavy
As I quickly covered ground.
I heard a robin. Then a meadowlark.
It was time, and this had to be.
I knew they had learned everything--
How to pick up your scent,
How to turn away from your morbid doings,
How to spot the silvery shine of fish
In the cool water.
I looked back one last time,
Then headed upstream.
It was not an abandonment.
I still feel their nuzzles
Near my belly,
Still remember the soft padding
Of their paws.
Their scent will stay with me forever,
And I will always think I know
Just where they are,
Even though as female and male
They will follow
Two different paths.
It is not the same
As tossing a totem into darkness
Then forgetting that it ever was.
Something sacred in the forest
Stays sacred
Even past a bear’s
Final sleep.
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