A Bear on the Path

by Ryan Clinesmith

Brother’s alone, aren’t we all,
a fallen sunflower in a field of sunflowers.
Mother, a shucked mollusk.
Her children take most of everything,
perhaps everything but her shell,
yet she insists she’ll feel better
if only she could eat more fiber.
We just learned of another baby.
Brother’s, while still in custody battles
over his firstborn.
My brother is a tree stump
teaching saplings immunity
through root structure,
and mother always worried
he’d kill himself one day.
Can a tree teach
other trees to protect
against tree?

In an empty field, a wolf-
pack follows caribou,

Alpha taking a wrong turn—
revealing pack,
failing to capture food.
Brother blames me for his poverty,
mushroom blaming tree for the axe.
I find it perplexing
we require a license to drive
but to birth...
Once, brother went into the woods,
while father was drunk,
lit gas cans on fire with some neighborhood kids.
He lit up.
Luckily, only losing an eyebrow for life,
though burned through and through
as if clearing a question of debris,
— “Where were you?”

A bear will leave a cub
on the path
knowing it’ll catch up or...
The question was resolved with benders,
during which the sun
was a female arachnid in disguise, —
“A furry tarantula god!”