Spring will eventually lend a gentle light to the bear cave. A sperm will meet with an egg. Still if we lay dormant for too long, we’re dead already. The colours are all washed out, the patterns clash, the hatred drips like snot. I have no hatred of doors in general, it’s this door in particular I despise.  A cave, a door, a mirror, a world.

Inside the bear crafts a world, a bear-filled world out of his imagination, and the intricate knowledge of the olfaction systems.  Outside lives the world dancing naked and unafraid.  When the bear says he hates the door, he loves the door really, but the door hurt him deeply, a soul deep wound, an insult that is unforgivable.  Bears don’t change. As a sperm and an egg he lay dormant, waiting for the right season and food supply of his mother.  He was born while she was in hibernation.  They hibernated together.  Now he sleeps alone. Despising the door, avoiding the mirror.

Bear, you were brave enough to dismantle all the clothes lines once, remember that dream, a song line, the weapon tree, the olive tree. Burn the book you wrote comparing yourself to frogs and snails and ultra violent tales of M16s and beauty queens and mass graves.  A bear may rapsodise on the fragility of a flower, broken bottles, broken dreams, drones and rapes and microwave weapons. Living dangerously is leaving scissors on the floor.

Bears today are all this and nothing much but occasional hug.  The bear looks in the mirror.  Some days I just want to wear clothes, he says. ‘The mirror is not the problem’ say the Calvinists. “Forget insurrections’ the anarchists lie. Look for the part of the game where the game wanted you, as every car drives by.  Its smashing bottles. Be thankful. The bears pushed the bulldozers away the other day.  They pushed back the borders.  They extended the bail.  They released the kids from their cages.  They adjourned the inevitable. Fascists are still burning people’s houses down. They broke the mirrors and used the fractured surface to reflect the sun. I can’t rhapsodise about spring in times like these, with clothes lines and doors and scissors on the floor. Look for poetry somewhere else where red tastes like fire. I’ve found my cave.