English Department faculty member Betsy LaPadula is the author of the poetry chapbook Elpenor Falls. She offers a grateful acknowledgement to her student Finn Jenkins ’20 for the bears in this poem.
Flint
strikes fire, strikes
an inner chord, a choir
of bears in a broken tree
wishing for winter. It
staves off darkness,
muscles the forest,
crams leaves into craws,
charges veins to bone,
guides eleatic, a moon
unsavory, hooded,
a toothed beak
opening, a nuncio
saying: some things
are better left alone—
they find bitter
root in fleshless soil.
grateful acknowledgement to Finn Jenkins ’20, for the bears.