The Bear at the Dump

--William Matthews

Amidst the too much that we buy and throw

away and the far too much we wrap it in,

the bear found a few items of special

interest--a honeydew rind, a used tampon,

the bone from a leg of lamb. He'd rock back

lightly onto his rear paws and slash

open a plastic bag, and then his nose--

jammed almost with a surfeit of rank

and likely information, for he would pause--

and then his whole dowsing snout would

insinuate itself a little way

inside. By now he'd have hunched his weight 

forward slightly, and then he'd snatch it back,

trailed by some tidbit in his teeth. He'd look

around. What a good boy am he.

The guardian of the dump was used

to this and not amused. "He'll drag that shit

every which damn way," he grumbled

who'd dozed and scraped a pit to keep that shit

where the town paid to contain it.

The others of us looked and looked. "City

folks like you don't get to see this often,"

one year-round resident accused me.

Some winter I'll bring him down to learn

to love a rat working a length of subway

track. "Nope," I replied. Just then the bear

decamped for the woods with a marl of grease

and slather in his mouth and on his snout,

picking up speed, not cute (nor had he been

cute before, slavering with greed, his weight

all sunk to his seated rump and his nose stuck

up to sift the rich and fetid air, shaped

like a huge, furry pear), but richly

fed on the slow-simmering dump, and gone

into the bug-thick woods and anecdote.