Poetry by Paul Handley

Bear Rules

The bars of these branches held me again,
after the bear left, gruffly pushing me to this safe zone.
She growled berry and rodent breath that was flecks of mamma's toilet water to me.

It was here Bear used to talk to me.
I was six and it took six years to believe it was a dream.
I called her Bear when I was upset with her, cause she said bears are nameless,
but relented when I used Caliste.

Bear took me in the night.
We dared a look to see uniforms of fluorescent blue,
with laser flashlights, step up the stoop.
My face in a shoulder of boiled wool, knotted by rainwater and berry juice,
cut by the scent of rotting perch.

Earlier that day we had been fishing.
Bear cut them with a pommel of barbs,
lacerated the stunned fish, while lacing it onto a rock,
made hirsute by a seaweed facial.
The wet, making Caliste's black hair curl above her crust.

I cried for my bear whose intervention meant no more interspecies meets,
except for food.
Bear told me she skirted the rules when we met.
The time machine also has rules and won't escort me to a core happening,
but only after.

I will find the families of those in blue, and will stay until then.
My cousins will tell me the story of an ugly woman who lived as a bear.
I duped the time machine and it will be more careful with me. Next time.