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Around the polynia, the polar bear mills like a vacationer
around a pool, only this bear’s pleasure is wrapped in stillness,
a sub-zero oasis in baffles of snow. The bear, who lumbering,
travels his seasons driven by hunger, who moults in the spring,
winters in the den he dug with the wide paw
now thrown over his snout to keep warm. The bear
is at rest, like a blanket of snow, recovering. His muscles
are at rest like a grenade, a land-mine, a trap-door.
His jaw is at rest, like a fox-trap, a clamp. His paws,
their non-retractable claws, his forty-two teeth, dead still
as a hunter, at rest like a bullet asleep in its chamber.
His organs are slow-burning embers, his brain, a tank of gasoline.
The bear dreams of a berry on the tip of a twig,
the weight of a seal swollen like a fruit on the claw of a branch.
His swaddle of blubber twitches at the imagined windfall,
the thump of a fist of raw flesh pounding at his icy door.
He rests, and in his sleep, he’s turning seal into bear.
The polar bear is an animal of ice who must rest
or swim for the heat that consumes him. His fur
is the fire that blazes from his charred-black skin.
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