In the mountains I set out in my
favorite running shoes black and red
for a run down the side past huge glacial erratics
through the brown needle floor
of hundred foot White Pines and
across a field of grasses bleached August white.
The trail pitched steeply down into the valley
of an old stream, dark in its thickwalled shade
until it leveled and grew lighter.
I stopped a moment to catch my breath amidst the small meadow
and to look at this anomalous damp place
with dead trees at its edges.
On the other side of the clearing crunched branches
and bark underfoot.
Three bears shambling, a mother and her two adolescents,
I in their playground or perhaps their quest for food
and they part of my run
My feet frozen to the muddy track
My breath quickened with the taste of musky air.
The mother acted first, turning up the steep hill,
the children up two dead trees
tearing huge chunks of bark from the trunks, comical in their ineptitude.
Their utter panic set me slightly at ease
until mother turned and roared
sending dithering birds into the air, the shock of their wings
racing to my heart, a thunder in my ears
and the cubs dropped down the trees like firemen down their poles
and raced up the hill, pushing mountains of pine needles beneath their feet,
thrashing through the underbrush, slowly diminishing into forest silence.
Only the rush of blood remained and my feet tingled
as if on the edge of a precipice.
I waited for them.
There were ferns and white wild flowers
growing from the dark black mud.
I ran.