It's time I wrote my “bearshit-on-the-trail” poem
though generally in California wild bears
don't defecate on trails. I don't mean garbage-eating camp bears
strung out on junk food plundered from the plastic coolers
of frightened tourists from New York and Massachusetts
or rare imported bears displayed at zoos, bears
dancing in circuses disguised as lapdogs
or stuffed and posed in public institutions. By wild bears
I mean ones mostly never seen besides off-trail.
What need for paths have animals who somersault
through boulderfields and cliff-face willow thickets
unimpeded, like clowns in baggy overalls
practicing gymnastic stunts? Sunny summer mornings
a bear shits in the shade on hemlock duff and sprawls
circles in the meadow, toppling corn lilies like a child.
His ropy coil of grass deposited
out of the wind behind the summit outcrop
means early season is lean enough it makes a bear eat weeds;
ripe huckleberries and fragmented trout bones splattered
on lichened granite lakeside say good times at last.
When a wild bear shits on the trail he means it.
Large fresh piles at emphatic intervals
marking the last mile of descent to Buckeye Forks proclaim
the pocket glade overlooking the confluence
and berry thicket at the ford his personal domain.