Major Bear

Although I'm cracking wise and quoting Yeats,

explaining all the voices Kant can't do,
the damn bear won't look back. He has a den
accessible to meat- and berry-men,
but not to those whose popcorn-covered cates
feed just themselves. He may live in a zoo,

which is his loss to bear: but one must buy
goodwill from prisoners. He can smell my heart,
so fat, so crowded, from this far away.
When I go home to betty, he will stay,
a bear among men, a bear who will not try
to rise above his nature. Take your art

to some museum, where a red Matisse,
resigned to gilt, rectangularly framed,
hangs. Never shuffles. Never craps or roars.
Blinks not. As squares dance in the in-of-doors,
my bear is moated by such white police.
Die, will you? Do. The bear will not be blamed.

Only Labor Day

Look at the falling leaves.
It's only Labor Day,
When crabgrass half believes
We've scarcely finished May.

The chickadee is demanding
Every surviving seed.
The hollyhock still is standing,
Old habit now, not need

To make the bees attend
And propagate.  We say,
Look at the leaves descend,
And then we look away.