The mother

Right at dusk the mother bear leads her cubs down to the edge of the woods & stops, hearing a screen door ease open, smelling trouble.

My grossly unequal nose picks up nothing of her musk or the sweet milk oozing from well-bit nipples. My primate eyes are made for the colors of day, not shades of darkness. I peer into every shadow between the trees, each clot of night.

The space between us fills with explosions of breath: HUH. HUH. I hear claws on tree trunks & small things running through the brush. When the mother clacks her teeth, I hear the dangerous size of her in that hollow TOCK TOCK TOCK.

I lean out over the porch rail, listening, naked from the waist up. A mosquito whines in my ear. The fireflies, as usual, illuminate nothing.

The next morning, when I go to look, every rock on the hillside has been moved from its bed.