Woman goes out into damp December

Woman goes out into damp December

dish pan in hand,

offers water to the slumbering

  blackberry vines. She slaps the pan,

imagines the bear,

come round two mornings before,

  wrought iron pole of the bird house bowed

nearly double. She conjures

the great black shape,

  belly full of suet, chickadee

      feeder broken at his feet, perches

neatly removed, plastic tube pierced

  by the tooth of his hunger. She’s seen

where he hunkers, straw of dying

grass flattened in the woods

  behind her home, nocturnal swath

carved wide with his wanderings.

She wants to catch him at his vandalisms,

  wonders if she were to yield

her last basket of apples—

mealy, sweet—if giving brings more

  than a bearish appetite.

In this slim, growing bleak

and darker time, she greets

  a star swelling with secrets, a body

pressing on through darkness.