Killing the Bear


Born into fury,
starved and angry,
inhabiting the mountains
shiftless around Shasta,
he seemed when you met him
that summer day . . . 

You had come there, alone,
from your home city
to escape its troubles,
the mad-making politics
that poisoned most 
of the galling country:
a presidential oaf, 
half cunning fox, 
half demented bear, 
and the rest of the barbarians
not only you loathed
with a lucid hatred,
and few ways to disgorge it.

So you went to the mountains.
Brought sleeping sack, tent,
bare necessities, fire needs, 
a week’s worth of food,
a lamp, a knife;
hiked an hour and a half
into the Sierra
through oak and pine woods,
manzanita, brush land,
meadows of yellow grass,
by creeks of runoff
from the winter’s snowfall,
until you found a place
near a rock pile, flat,
at once cozy and open,
near a stream and a view
of a majesty of mountains
and no sign of humanity
for miles …

You stopped, took a deep
long breath—the first 
you’d taken, it seemed, 
for months. Your nerves,
tense so long, slackened.
You felt you were home
at last. You whistled
while setting up your tent,
felt the squirrels watching you,
sat for hours by the fire 
as the long, high, deep 
sky of summer evening
almost imperceptibly
faded into night
and stars you had not seen
since childhood…

It was a rude awakening
when sun pried your eyes open
to the sight of an old grizzly
staring blankly at you:
huge, mangy, hungry,
unsure on his legs, or the courage
of terror (despite 
a distracting irrelevancy, 
“Are there even grizzlies 
in the Sierras?” almost tripped 
your reflexes)
never would have driven 
you to your first thrust.

The knife was near your sack:
a butcher knife it was,
just sharpened before you left;
hard, new, shining.
You grabbed it as the bear 
trundled awkwardly at you,
and, yanking out of the sack,
you screamed like a banshee,
and, foolishly enough,
ran at it. The beast stopped,
puzzled by the naked
monkey waving a bit of 
glitter with a pathetic
shriek. At full height,
he roared as you plunged 
the blade into what 
felt soft as a pillow. 
A paw swatted you with contempt.
and you fell over the dead campfire,
smearing you with a warpaint
of ashes;
yet still holding the knife. 
He came at you, claws out. 
Leaping up with a new shout, 
you swung the knife in wide arcs,
the beast baffling a moment,
then slipped behind a sycamore 
as he clawed away its bark,
then pulled it down. Slipped 
your foot at the edge 
of the stream; you cried
in anguish and anger,
sure it was over 
as the bear bore down 
finally upon you, 
his teeth bright, his breath 
in your face, his eyes
as cold, shining as stones. 
Terrified, hysterical, you shouted out
your last cry
and thrust the knife 
at the throat.
It sunk to the haft; blood
spurted over your hand. The bear’s 
roar choked to a gurgling, 
the mouth froze, startled, the eyes, 
blank, black, stunned,
as the light vanished from them; 
they looked almost sad. 
You felt almost sorry
as he sank over your legs,
groaning a sigh
as you pulled out the knife, 
and fell back into the stream.

You hauled your legs slowly
from under the dead hulk. 
Then pulled yourself from the flowing 
cold water, and stood 
on the stream bank,
gazing down at the beast,
the overthrown king 
of the woods.

Then something curious happened:
you heard a voice. Strangely,
it was as if the grizzly 
spoke from the dead body.

“Human:
between you and triumph
is no more than between
you and your destruction:
the difference is the act.
Shall the way of your life
be like the ice on a lake 
or like the arc of an arrow?

“Be cunning and patient,
and when the time comes
to strike—and it always comes –
be swift, and be certain.
Most of all, remember:
keep your knife always
sharp. And close.”

Then you heard the singing
of many birds. Your eyes
opened to the flickering
of shadows above your head,
and you looked, surprised, around you.
You lay in your sack, 
the tent undisturbed. 
A zephyr shook it. You crawled
out to the cool morning.

What a dream! you thought.
Yet you were not sure.
You looked carefully about you,
half expecting the grizzly.
Nothing appeared but a few
squirrels; a robin
landed on a grass patch and flew off.

There are dreams so vivid
they seem more real than waking,
the reality of waking 
could you but see the real.
But when you wake, you sleep,
and when you sleep, you waken:
the lessons of that other world
are ones that you fail 
to learn at your peril.

Who can be sure? No one.
Yet the hungry bear
that now is coming toward you
is vulnerable to one
(you know, now you have woke),
to one, single, lucky,
well-timed, well-delivered,
coolly administered,
unfearing stroke.

_____

Christopher Bernard is an award-winning poet and novelist living in San Francisco. His book The Socialist’s Garden of Verses won a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award in 2021. In 2025, his first novel, A Spy in the Ruins, is celebrating the twentieth anniversary of its original publication.