The Crucified Bear “The Teacher said -- Raise the window shades -- Two students got off their cushions and went, rolling the shades up in exactly the same way -- on returning to their seats the teacher said -- One of you has it -- the other doesn’t” - Zen Koan Con/Jur/d, 4/16/2024 Those of you who been with us since the first cemetery walk, will recall the crucified toy bear, slicked back, threatening mildew remarkably rot free, appearing to be ceramic the elements having caused a uniformity to the bedraggled gray synthetic fur like stuffing sack, the plastic black eyes peer beadily into the corner of Floral Park: Historic Name Dropping and Statuary Garden, reserved for stillborn, children and one assumes pets, since you will remember such a striking scene, we’ll spare you the details and record only impressions, in the style of a lesser, mostly ignored painter in Claude Monet’s Impressionist School
The sharpness of shadows delineate Spring, weathermen can no longer accurately, predict temperatures in Fahrenheit or Celsius
The twisted older tree standing accidental guard on two daughters dead in 1913 belies the instability all around us the shadows its limbs cast cut darkly through the freshly greened feral grass
Taking in the pollen laden air
accompanied by a headache
of unknown origin, possibly
the blood transfusions in the Fall
has introduced a previously unknown
histamine response, like our mother’s
new allergy to Poison Ivy after getting
a kind stranger’s hemoglobin when she
had a difficult miscarriage
Surprised by the size of the fly one wouldn’t think, with the tempest of temperatures and conditions it could successfully move from egg to maggot to pupate in this short time, maybe defrosting rather than sexual reproduction
We know the only question
worth asking
is, who is replaces the bear
when it rots, synthetic fibers
attract no flies yet, the wind
the hail, without miracle, moves stones
uproots trees, reveals squared hollows among
grassroots, boneless in this damp, an occasional
gold tinted splinter, yet each season
a crucified bear, often rehung, on
the cheap gray slowly rotting crossbeam
with the peeling faded gold, squared mailbox
letters: SNUG L S
This season, however
a separate board of equally suspicious
scrap-pile provenance, upon which our toy
bear, who one suspects
was never called Teddy, is attached
sitting upon
a pile of other
stuffed and rotting
toys, Hieronymus
corpses, the idea of
play, is similar to the
dog, who brings to his companion
a human femur expecting to play fetch
it seemed, the bottom toy was of Disney’s Pluto
Partially buried in the freshly defrosted muck
teeming now with worms
and nematodes
And, if we were to know, who lovingly refreshes
this memorial, this gate to the underworld
this statement, unobserved yet, maintained
or at least ignored by the caretakers, and
gravediggers, would we want to meet them?We may say yes / You may say no Which one of us has it which one of us doesn’t?
Much love,
Con/Jur/d, 4/16/2024