Natural History Note: People may manage this land, but the bears own it. And they have the right-of-way even when napping. When a bear impedes the progress of people the rangers refer to it as a “bear jam.”
After a meandering graze through a salad of tall marsh grass, she sits by the water, rests her head. Eyes closed until a conspiracy of wind and blade brush her nose. She bites the green ticklers without a change of posture and chews back to dreams.
Linger on the bridgeto avoid the fate of grass
mown down in slumber.
Form Editorial:
The prose in a Haibun traditionally is objective: personal pronouns are
eschewed. Here I strove for that and
reduced the passage from 178 words to less than 50. It took me the good part of an hour to get
there: word jam?
Where else but in Alaska would bear jam be part of the vernacular? It may be autumn canning season but this local bear jam contains no sugar.
ReplyDeleteGood play on words!
ReplyDelete