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Devotions Meanwhile, rut-tugged moose press against velvet sky dens sounding hoofed ridges  into aspen-tined bends, earth-spruced  and wallowed. Meanwhile, scents uncurl  into ermine-river whirl cottonwood fur-berry to silver stone burl, sinewy and root-needled  grey bark against snow. Meanwhile, alder-quaked lynx…

Ocean Sound I left the mountains for ocean sound. Every year I do this, chasing a childhood  glimpse so bright and terrible it wakes me still, sends me  to pace across damp  earth breathing in stars until it calls again…

Summer Bones It must have happened with my back turned to the sea, head full of green-song and forget-me-not blue. Somehow I’d missed the signs. Summer’s feet tightened in a breath, wet nose lifting. It trotted upslope as if summoned,…

Hunger On a zipper catch breath they slipped  from the trees, moving as meadow. Three bears  rolling closer on river-rock feet  toward the window where I stood having just lost the way to everything’s name except bear and oh Until one…

June This isn’t a poem about joy, but of what grows around it. A vining thing — glossy, clandestine, fiddlehead-coy and arnica-bright near forget-me-not blue. It bursts vivid as the unconstrained sea — and brief as its bore tide. Like…

Hello! I’m so glad you’re here. Habit suggests I post a new poem tonight. Instead, I’d like to gratefully acknowledge your presence and thank you for following bearbones. Thank you. Really. I mean it. Also, here is a little update:…

When the Woodpecker Knocks Even the young dogs answer when the woodpecker knocks, tapping  at the rough doors of aspen  and curling shutters of birch. We watch  in sepia, tails up, breathless  to be fern deep in the answering dapple…

Follow Spring presses in, circling my ribbed fences, leaping easily to merry mud-track across the clean creased floors of my itching palms  leaving grit to sit like a calling card  wedged between whorl and nail, addressing the unnamed parts of…

Cranesong So it turns out  falling stars aren’t suns gone dark but rocks on fire, an alchemy of dust  meeting sky  and only appear to fall  by streaking toward or slipping away to cross some threshold, a veil hidden  until…

Tribute It was how shadows in blue branches made tributaries  across snow. I paused, not yet thinking about eons of early spring suns but of one long ago dawn, indelible and new, gilding  the deep pines with its fragile birr,…