My brother saw the amorous bears
rolling about in the meadow up by
Lowder Mountain the lupine crushed,
paintbrush flattened in their
loving swathe how he nibbled
her ear and she smacked him
with her paw, there in the fall
of fat September. And my brother
crept away on hands and knees
into the hemlock thicket.
Then the rain, the snow, and we
in our separate lives content
because sunlight struck a pair
of bears apart from our human way
this wearing of shoes, and words,
and nations.