Taming a Bear

I tried to punish her

Into obedience

At first, but a stick was only

A natural annoyance

And a whip an inedible nuisance.

She brushed them aside and went

On thinking whatever it was

She kept inside that skull.

I tried starvation, but she

Had always been so hungry,

She couldn't tell the difference.

She had been born starving

And had hungered inside out

With a savage vigilance

And a serene impatience.

I think I could have shot her

Without earning the trophy

Of her complete attention.

So I tried the opposite:

Rewards - if she climbed ladders

Or walked on her hind feet.

What went from glove to jaws,

From pail to prehensile tongue,

Might have been called food,

But I wasn't giving it.

All food was hers

Anyway, not mine.

I was a temporary

Slow incompetent

Insignificant conduit

Of food and nothing more.

After long years, she learned

(Though she already knew

All she wanted to know)

Finally, grudgingly how

To make me do my trick:

Passing her food along

With a minimum of fuss

And with no direct complaints

From me, her performing human.

She works now under the lights,

Responding to applause

By moving a little less

Ponderously than usual.

On a good night she can juggle

And balance on a ball

And waltz through a ring of fire

Unafraid. (She was born unafraid.)

She wears a chain and muzzle,

She does without her claws,

And between acts she waits

In her cage and gazes,

Not off into the distance,

But down and inward

At what stays hers alone.

Sometimes, for no real rhyme

Or reason, she stares at me

For a long withering moment,

And I think, maybe, I see

What she keeps in there

In the name of indifference,

In the name of hunger:

The power of emptiness,

The gathering and regathering

Of her own wilderness.