Black as the blackest hours before dawn,

the black bear clambered up the deck stairs,

and pulled down the feeder for the season.

Shocked by the light, he hugged the railing

like a fumbling tightrope walker and thudded

down to lumber off into the darkness

that light makes of everything not itself.

Neither cub nor grown-up; a spring wanderer.

And so, when the white-throated sparrows

who sing so fulsomely about Old Sam

Peabody, and the squeaky, chattering finches,

and of course the chickadees and their friends

the nuthatches, finish pecking up

this morning’s mess, that will be that. They’ll

have to find their own bugs and buds

and seeds. And it’s the time they should

light out. When my eyes met the bear’s

black glitter, no luminous communion

exchanged. It’s common here. Everyone

knows better than to keep feeders up

on into May, yet everyone forgets

sometimes. Our deer don’t step gingerly

from the woods to curl up next to us

while we write pleased poems in our yards.

We bait bears here. Which is not to say

I do, but don’t you say “we” when you talk

about America? How cruel & empty

we are. Unlike Tuscany, let’s say, where not so

long ago I know they caught and ate

their sparrows, sometimes thirty to a stew.

William Hathaway’s hard-edged poems have appeared frequently in national periodicals and in seven books, the most recent of which is “Sightseer,” published by Canio’s Editions of Sagaponack, N.Y. He lives in Surry.