The Shape of Grief

On the side of  the mountain road,

a black bear, with the soft shovel of  her nose,

is pursuing a mason jar,

pulled from a barrel of trash,

in front of a line of trees.

Her back, rounded with devotion,

rolls on the oars of  her shoulders,

as tic, tic, tic goes the work

of her claws and then

thwop goes the top and she is

inside, amber spilling out

on her paws and who knows how long

I will stay here, parked,

under the spell of a hunger

that is oblivious,

the way this morning

in the shower

my body didn’t care

that I was busy when it doubled me over,

palms gripping the skin above my knees,

one wet hand at a time

lifting to hold the wall

as if to hold time in place—

while I slid, anyway,

into that shower last Easter,

when you bent me over,

entered me from behind,

crying out—

a wild animal

this and now this—

the layers of one enormous back

shuddering

toward the sweet.