The Bear        I was standing near a corral of barbed wire attached to a barn out in the country along a dirt road. A white bear was wearing a path inside the fence. It was winter, night. Somehow, I was responsible for the bear, but wanted to go to town, but had to stay with him. But I decided to let him out, and if he killed some people, he killed them, and I'd be free of him.        We headed along the snowblown dirt road to an intersection in the distance where winter swirled in the white cone of a streetlight. The bear padded six feet in front of me. Would he turn on me?        How stupid I was to let him out, to think of showing him where there were people. I wondered if I could get him back into the corral. Never mind. To hell with all the people.        But halfway to the intersection I turned back. The bear followed, began to play, suspecting nothing of towns or populations. He rolled in the road, charged into snowdrifts, knelt on floppy front paws and jumped away, turned a somersault in the air, his fur outlined in starlight.        For now, there on that snowroad in the wild glitter of trees, in huffs of breathsteam against the blackness, in the icicle gleam of teeth, the white bear ran toward me and away, then toward me, his fur flying and swaying in slow motion as he followed me — so far, so good — back to the corral. William Heyen Pig Notes & Dumb Music: Prose on Poetry BOA Editions, Ltd. Copyright © 1998 by William Heyen. All rights reserved. Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.