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Liz Atkin

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Afterlife of a Bear

Stuffed in an artistic manner
to stand in the Town Museum,
on the landing, alongside the working hive.

Then museum closure meant
a move to the Junior Library
where children dared
to grab handfuls of fur
and climbed eight ponderous feet
to waggle loose ochre teeth
and pull out six inch claws
without a single headsplitting cuff.

Eventually, the council took the balding,
toothless, decaying creature
to the local tip where

the men stood him on top of their caravan
to survey a perimeter fence with exit holes
cut in it for home made rabbit hutches,
and where the chained pit bull barked
at him all day, each bark enhancing,
outlining and emphasising his bearness,
where gulls wheeled and shrieked above
him and car headlights at night
in harsh raw weather fleetingly picked
him out and cast a roaring shadow,
and all these things made an escaped bear
loose in Co. Durham at last seem possible.

 

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