Conversations About the Treachery of Polar Bears

Creatures get the devil in them
sometimes.

A paw the size of Montana,
but the sweetest, sweetest face;
nose twitching every
point on the compass in the wind.

He'd seen the sun set
only to rise again
minutes later;

He'd watched
upsidedown freighters
sail the white horizon.

What kind of animal
could make sense
in a place like that?

He let me smoke
machine-pressed,
cheap Cuban
cigars in his store;

let me take my boots
and my socks off;

let me doze off on the floor.

"Socks like these
used to be made of wool
you'd spend a year
saving for."

I was going to do what I was going to do.

He said.

I was going to end up
where I was going to end up.

But not without
pancakes at midnight
with his daughter
at the foot of a closed bridge,
and state-of-the-art socks,
and a windproof lighter,
and a coat
made of the stuff of
Thor's hammer.

"Don't be a plaything,"
he said.
"Be awake;
and pointy, and sharp, and painful,
and more trouble than you're worth."

A chuckle.

A silence.

"That's not the way you want God to take you to his bosom,"

he said,
staring.