Because we want to take pictures of bears and moose
without actually coming near them—though
already I have called to you, unloading groceries
from the car, when a cow and her calf clopped down
our street, taller than I thought, and faster, too—because
we want to look like real Alaskans to those East Coast
city slickers, those smog-breathers, those subway-riders,
our friends back home, we drive down the only highway
to the Center where, every five minutes for the duration
of our visit, we hear the eerie shrieks of the elk, calling
for one another in urgent lust, which at first I decide is
the angry scream of a small girl throwing a tantrum
in five-minute intervals but which Wikipedia
informs me is “one of the most distinctive sounds
in nature, akin to the howl of the gray wolf.” And later,
when we learn from a colorful sign that females are attracted
to the elk that bugle the loudest and most often, I sympathize
more with the elk and with the caribou, too, locking
their antlers into one another because everyone in this Center
is in love, including me, because when I stare at you staring
at a muddy bison sleeping pressed flush against the wire
of her fence, and when I see your mouth move, and then
later, before I put my mouth on you, when I ask what you talked
with the bison about, you say We understood each other, which
I take to mean:
Bison: There is nowhere for me to be safe
Woman I love: I have been your kind
[an elk shrieks]
Love, let’s be the black bears that refuse our sirloin
steaks, turning our noses up to the Lead Naturalist,
or the intern—whoever is feeding us that day—waiting
patiently for a handful of frozen berries flung into
our yard. Let’s be those bears who come when called,
eat our fill of this land, then pad back together into
the thick brush, trying to be as wild as we still can.