I don’t want to be eaten by a grizzly,
my dad would say
every time we were camping.
But I wouldn’t want to be here
if it weren’t possible.

I’m sitting outside, daydreaming,
when up the sidewalk strolls
my neighbor, his torpid eyes
fastened like buttons, his mouth
a bloodless sphincter of puckered
sanctimony. No matter what we
talk about, he somehow finds a way
to bring up my father, to remind me
that he knew him sixty years ago
when they were just boys.

I don’t bother reminding him
that I’ve always known
my father, that he sang to me
even in his final hours,
that I was there when he died,
my devastation stretched like taffy
in the silver rail of his hospice bed.

Finally, the neighbor wanders
down the street, apparently
satisfied with something
in our exchange, rounds
the corner and is gone.

I go back to sitting, but I’m not
daydreaming anymore.
I’m thinking how awful it would be
to live in a mind that has lost its grizzlies.

To not know that everything is a grizzly.

Martin Vest’s work has appeared in publications throughout the world. His poems can most recently be found in Rattle, The Sonora Review, Slipstream, Louisville Review, and elsewhere. He lives in the high desert of eastern Idaho.