Bear by Ellen Bryant Voigt

Bear

 

pressed full-length against the screen unzipping it

for a better grip to help him help himself to the seed and the suet

slung high under the eave by the man

who has charged down from the bedroom onto the porch

in his white loincloth like David against Goliath

but only one good lung shouting swearing

and behind him the woman caught

at the lip of the lit kitchen

                                                where was my sister

with her gun or would she be praying since she prays routinely

for a parking spot and there it is or would she be speechless for once

that this man so moderate so genial so unlike me

had put himself one body-length away from a full-grown bear

or would she be saying you my dear are the person who married him

which of course I did I did and I stood behind him

as he stood his ground on the ground that is our porch

                                                                                               you can see

the marks gouged by the famous claws on the wall inside new screen

now laced by a wire trellis on which nothing climbs

a vertical electric fence one of us thinks

the bear can hear it hum from the edge of the woods

watching us like a child sent to his room as we grill the salmon

we spiked with juniper berries the other one thinks

the plural pronoun is a dangerous fiction the source

of so much unexpected loneliness