ManicDDaily

Bear

We were like two bears in the forest, destined
never to meet, only we did meet
and we weren’t furry or fat–
well, maybe a little love-handled,
except that we hadn’t been love-handled
so that when you touched me–you do have pale soft
hairs on the tops of your fingers–I shivered–
just like one of those bears stepping out
from under a waterfall or ducking down
to catch a fish, droplets arcing in finned
sparkle around my head–instead, we stood
in an abandoned hall, wooden closets
built into the walls, and only my nostrils moved, flaring a bit
with the dust; your hands as warm as a bear’s
certainly, only his would be pawed, and I
don’t know if bears put paws around each other
when they come out in early Spring, but when we met
in that wood hall, we barely paused in what was
warm, moist, musked, emergent—
if you know what I mean–as if we’d each been stuck
in some dim den, as if we’d each
been hibernating, only we’d been awake
in our dens, lying so
unbearably alone and
sleepless.

Until, that is, we met,
like two bared, destined,
in a forest—wait, did I get
that right?

Yes.

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A blogging buddy cheered me up the other night by sending me a list of some very silly analogies written by High School students.  That thought let me to this poem which I am posting for the With Real Toads prompt by Susan re writing with an extended simile.  I am not sure that this qualifies but it was fun.