For whom does the bear grass grow,
no grass at all but lily,
whose great silky spike of flowers,
like the spittle of stars hung on a pole,
smells of earth and dung and mold?
Something so magnificent,
so insistently erect,
should not be so awkward, as it is,
in reaching for the sky.
All night the deer arrive
and in a single bite
lop off the flowers, one by one,
leaving thick, hairy, waxen stems
sticking up in moonlight,
shadowy mounds of coarse leaves
hugging the ground below.
Do bears come too to wallow
in the aftermath of the feast?
Do they search out the
bear grass that is no grass at all,
but to whom they have provisioned
as its name, imbued with musk and
claw and snout and fur, their own?
Only a poem would ask such questions.
The bear, the lily, the night, the deer,
the moon
are keeping to themselves,
including on the matter of how
something so magnificent,
so insistently erect,
should be so awkward, as it is,
in reaching for the sky.
Contemplative Ecologies 