Twilight

There's a black bear in the apple tree and he won't come down. I can hear him panting, like an athlete. I can smell the stink of his body. Come down, black bear. Can you hear me? The mind is the most interesting thing to me; like the sudden death of the sun, it seems implausible that darkness will swallow it or that anything is lost forever there, like a black bear in a fruit tree, gulping up sour apples with dry sucking sounds, or like us at the pier, somber and tired, making food from sunlight, you saying a word, me saying a word, trying hard, though things were disintegrating. Still, I wanted you, your lips on my neck, your postmodern sexuality. Forlorn and anonymous: I didn't want to be that. I could hear the great barking monsters of the lower waters calling me forward. You see, my mind takes me far, but my heart dreams of return. Black bear, with pale-pink tongue at the center of his face, is turning his head, like the face of Christ from life. Shaking the apple boughs, he is stronger than I am and seems so free of passion— no fear, no pain, no tenderness. I want to be that. Come down, black bear, I want to learn the faith of the indifferent.