I saw a bear today

I saw a bear today.

Not directly. Refracted.

Through the beveled edge

Of a train window.

—

I looked down for my camera.

She was gone.

—

Mr. Kindly Conductor told me

That bears come up above the tree line

To eat baby moth larvae

From between the scraggle rocks.

—

“You’re welcome, bairs,” I told them.

(See, I’ve been a moth before.)

—

How many squirmy moth eggs

Can one bear eat

While he sits,

And basks in the sun?

—

Note: I wrote this poem on the train that climbs the mountain known as "Pike's Peak." The mountain was called Tava-Kaavi or "Sun Mountain" by the Nuuchiu or Ute people who are the longest continuous Indigenous inhabitants of what is now referred to as Colorado. Zebulon Pike, for whom the mountain is now "named," never successfully climbed Tava-Kaavi.