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Poem

By Edward WeismillerPosted Wednesday, Aug. 25, 1999, at 3:20 AM ET

"That a bear brings forth her young informous and unshapen, which she fashioneth after by licking them over, is an opinion not only ... common with us at present, but hath been of old delivered by ancient writers."--Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudoxia Epidemica, Book III, Chapter VI

I did nothing--
ended my hunger,
then slept.
There were others.
I dreamed
my fur grew,
snow came and drifted up the cave mouth,
my heart opened, and a bee crawled out.
Under their lids
my eyes caught blue fire.
I saw
the wind, and snarled.
Everywhere I curled there were claws.
I fought
rock, and lost,
branches, and lost,
water, and lost.
I could not think
my breath.
My belly opened and a bird flew in.
The sky tried to follow.
Swollen
clouds drift
through my blood.
I cannot close, am used,
my sleep their forest.
When will I wake?
Loosed
voices speak from me
sounds I can make nothing of.
Admitting pain
I tear my body
and it is done:
flowers push through my fur,
the bee thaws,

and there is something with me
that I have forgotten into life,
wingless,
unimaginable,
curled close.
I turn to it my whole body,
my tongue.
What I feel is not love.
This is mine.
It is not yet quite
finished.

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Edward Weismiller's first book of poetry, The Deer Come Down, was chosen by Stephen Vincent Benet in 1936 and published in the Yale Series of Younger Poets. He has recently completed his fourth collection of poems, titled About the Trees.
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