Tag Archives: spirit bear

October 19, 2013 · 7:57 am

Spirit Bear

by Thomas Davis

As cold as fish, as gray as slate, a bear
Rose from a foaming wave and walked to shore.
Above gray limestone cliffs a fiery glare
Of maples bent into the tempest’s roar.

Out in the lake clouds churned a waterspout
Into a weave of water, waves, and sky
As frenzied schools of salmon, whitefish, trout
Leapt from the wind-whipped waves and tried to fly.

The bear, eyes black as lodestone stone, stood, roared
Into the roar of waves and shrieking wind
And tipped its massive head, its voice a chord
That stilled the storm and brought it to an end.

As winter gnarled inside the bear’s black eyes,
Its breath spilled geese into the lake and skies.

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October 18, 2012 · 6:11 am

33. Vertigo and the Moment of Sudden Truth

1

He woke as groggy as he’d ever felt
In all his life, miasma thick inside
The copse and deep inside his self.
The fire he’d built was smoldering as light
Crept through the branches to the snowy ground.
He forced himself to sit, then slowly stood,
The weirding powerful enough to change
The way the trees stood as he tried to find
His balance in a universe that seemed to roll
As if the land had waves beneath its soils.

I have to kill the witch’s child, he said
Into a wilderness that did not hear.

He bent and carefully picked up his bow
And sheaf of arrows, then walked warily
Out of the copse into the fields of snow
That climbed toward the mountains and the green
Of pines that snaked between the dark cliff rock.
He had to orient himself toward
The cabin where the witch had made her home,
But then felt better as he slowly made his way
Across the blinding fields of crusted white.

A half mile from the copse he felt a wave
Of nausea sweep through his body, hands
He could not see opposed to letting him
Continue on the path he’d set himself.

The witch, he thought. She’d died. The dragon said
She’d died, but she had used the spirit bear
To forge a link out of the chaos wild
With death and nothingness and willed his will
To falter as she made the universe before
Him toss and turn into a whirling wall.

How could I know what’s going on? he thought.

And then he saw the spirit bear refracted
Out of his walking body on the snow.
His arm hair stirred with skin that tingled fear
Into the coldness of the snow and light.
He’d lost the battle that he’d thought he’d won.
He’d sent the bear into the nothingness
Out of the who of who he was, the man,
But now he was Ruarther and the bear.
He was a monster walking on the earth.
He looked again and felt the shadow bear
Beside him as he walked across the snow.

What should he do? he thought. What could he do?
The witch and bear were locked in mortal combat,
And he was in the center buffeted
By forces greater than mortality
Could hope to face and still survive intact.

2

Ruanne froze as her hand reached for a nail.
A vertigo so powerful it stunned
Her made her freeze upon the steep sloped roof
Where she was working on a shelter made
To hold a bowman who could shoot his arrows
At roaring dragons with a hope he’d live
When claws or fire came raking from the sky.

The voice that filled her mind was not the voice
Of Mmirrimann, but even larger, singing
With powers amplified by centuries
Of dragon elders taking care of dragons
In spite of all the awful human/dragon wars.
The dragon looked at her, evaluating
The woman that she was, and sighed so deeply
The sigh seemed dredged from all eternity.

“I am Ssruanne,” the dragon slowly said.

The golden dragon’s eyes blinked twice, and then
Ruanne was in the fields of blinding snow.
Ruarther, sheltering a spirit bear
Much larger than his body, eyes as red
As blood inside his veins, stood stunned, his life
Undone by knowing that he’d let the bear
Inside of him in spite of what he’d thought he’d done.

Without a thought Ruanne screamed out, “Ruarther!”
The village workers stopped their preparations
For dragon war and stared at how she stood
Upon the roof, her body aimed toward the mountains.

Ssruanne conducted all the power streamed
Into Ruanne’s wild cry toward Ruarther.
She shattered through the whirling chaos dancing
In waves around the hunter’s muddled head.

3

Ruarther felt a wave of raging love
Slam at the spirit bear inside of him.
He felt the bear’s fierce spirit spit a spume
Of hatred at the cry that pierced it like
An arrow singing from Ruarther’s bow.
He stood up straight. The winter air was clear
Of all the whirling that made the morning
Miasmic, filled with chaos, hatred, loss…
He felt as if he’d found himself and shrugged
The forces centering into his body out
Into a universe he could not know or see.

He looked toward the mountains, and the trees
He’d not seen lost inside the cold miasma.
He felt as if he was a child at night
Who was alone as dire wolves howled their hunger
Toward the darkness of an unseen moon.

A mile away a small stone cabin stood
Alone inside a wilderness that seemed alive
With songs too powerful for stone to silence.
He felt as if he’d starved himself for days.
He knew he’d reached the cottage that he’d sought
So angrily and single-mindedly.
He could not see the witch’s child outside,
But smoke was rising from the cottage fireplace.
He knelt down on the snow and took an arrow
And notched it on the bow’s taut, ready string.

He’d show the golden dragon that his heart
Was strong enough to mock her dragon fire,
He thought. He’d found the witches’ child she’d tried
To make him save from winter’s deadly storms.

To listen to this section of the epic, click on Vertigo and the Moment of Truth

Note: This is the thirty-third section of a long narrative poem, which has grown into The Dragon Epic. Inspired by John Keats’ long narrative poem, Lamia, it tells a story set in ancient times when dragons and humans were at peace. Click on the numbers below to reach other sections, or go to the Categories box to the right under The Dragon Epic. Click on Dragonflies, Dragons and Her Mother’s Death to go to the beginning and read forward. Go to Mmirrimann Inside the Conclave He Called to go to the section previous to this one.

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September 20, 2012 · 8:30 am

31. Doubt

an epic poem, The Dragon Epic, by Thomas Davis

Ruarther struggled to his feet confused, his head
A swirling pit of vertigo that made
Him feel as if he’d left the world and found
A state of being where the dead and living
Danced crazily between reality
And purgatory’s gray, miasmic void.
The sun was going down, and as he thought
About the spirit bear and how its strength
Had battered him, attempting to possess
The self he knew was who he’d always been,
He also knew the night would rage with cold
And threaten him with all the swirling mass
That made it difficult for him to stand.
He had to find a sheltered place to build
A fire or else not see another dawn.

At last he stood, a tottering old man
Whose will to live was interlinked with rage
Against a child he’d never even seen.
The thought that he had never seen the child,
Who plagued him like a meme, caught in his head
And echoed from his thought into his breath.
Disquiet made the swirling chaos sing.
He felt his body weave as if a wave
Flowed underneath the snow, unsteadying
His capability to stand upright.
He had to move, he thought. Before he fell.

He took a step toward the mountains, paused,
Then forced another step, the day’s last light
So blinding that he turned his head away.
Out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed
A copse of pines dark in the sunset’s fire.
He changed direction, stumbled awkwardly
Across the hard-crust snow toward the pines.

And then he stopped. He felt the spirit bear
Inside the murkiness in front of him.
The bear was in the void, a monstrous shape
That had no form, but whirled into a wind
That was no wind, a shape that struggled through
A turbulence that formed a boundary
Against its will and need to be alive.
Ruarther braced himself to feel the strength
The bear could batter at his grasp of self.
The bear had healed his body. Now it stalked
Him as he tried to find a place to start a fire.
The turbulence grew larger as it swirled,
But then it disappeared as if its winds
Had flashed into the void, the bear’s dark home.
There was no sense the witch was near to where
Ruarther forced his legs to move again.
He concentrated on the copse of pines
And lost the sense of fear he’d felt for days.
He felt as if a weight had been removed.
He touched the bow inside its case and smiled.

He stopped again. Above the mountain peaks
A black dot flew toward him through the air.
He felt malevolence that emanated
From where the dragon flashed the sunset’s fire
Off coal black wings a score of miles away.
He did not want to be upon the plains
Defenseless as the dragon hunted prey.
He forced himself to run toward the copse.

The time was near, he told himself. He felt
The dragons practicing their ancient skills,
Anticipating how they, at long last,
Could end continuance of human life.
He had to kill the witches’ child, he thought.
He had to end the threat all humans faced.

At last the pines grew larger as he ran.
He gasped for breath and tried to keep the world
From reaching up and slamming him to ground.
The pine trees welcomed him into their dusk.
He found a sheltered spot beside a trunk
Long fallen to the ground and built a fire.
As fingers trembled just above the flame,
He wondered why he thought the child had sent
The dragon searching for him in the woods.
The dragon had not said the child had sent
Her with intent to frighten him with flame.
The witch was dead. That’s what the dragon said.
The child was young and needed human care.

Perhaps the child was dead, he thought. Perhaps…
But then he felt the child across the miles
Inside her cottage by a warming fire.
He tried to puzzle out the feeling that he had,
But all he knew was that the child still lived.

There was a link between the golden dragon
And witches’ child, he thought. The coal black dragon
Was deep in plans for devastating war.

He stared at how the fire he’d built woke up
The dark and made it dance with leaping shadows.
Doubts gnawed at him inside the shadow dance.
He looked up at the sky. The waning moon
Cast little light, intensified the cold.
He took his blankets from his deer hide pack
And put more wood upon the growing fire.

He’d make the peace, he told himself. I’ll kill
The witches’ child and end the dragon threat.
He wondered why the spirit bear was blocked
From coming to the earth and walking where
Its kind had always walked through haunted light.

To listen to this section of the epic, click on Doubt.

Note: This is the thirty-first section of a long narrative poem, which has grown into The Dragon Epic. Inspired by John Keats’ long narrative poem, Lamia, it tells a story set in ancient times when dragons and humans were at peace. Click on the numbers below to reach other sections, or go to the Categories box to the right under The Dragon Epic. Click on Dragonflies, Dragons and Her Mother’s Death to go to the beginning and read forward. Go to Valley of the Scorched Black Stones to go to the section previous to this one.

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June 17, 2012 · 7:24 am

20. Inside a Furnace

an epic poem by Thomas Davis

He felt as if he was inside a furnace,
The brick kiln burning with a glowing heat,
His skin so sensitive it seared with pain
As if he’d touched a fiery red-hot coal
And spread its agony across his face,
Hours blistering into eternity,[1]
The fire from dragon’s breath a shroud he wore
That made each wracking gasp for air his life.

Inside this pain he still got to his feet
And gathered wood and kept the fire alive
As night turned day turned night turned day again.
He would not die, he said inside his mind.
He could not think, but still, he told himself.
I will not die. I’ll live another day.

A dawn rose golden over mountain peaks.
Snow sheened sky gold across the wilderness.
Asleep at last, arms twitching uncontrollably
As nightmares danced with fire and pain,
Ruarther did not see the bear rise from
The ashes of the dwindling fire so huge
It seemed as if it was the spawn of dragons,
Its dark, brown fur tinged gold by morning light.
Its smell was strong enough to have a whiff
Of sulfur as it shimmered, then solidified
Above the man who whimpered in his sleep.

The great bear wove its arms above the man.
Ruarther woke, his blood shot eyes wide with his fear.
The bear stood silent, waiting, coiled intensity.
Ruarther tried to gather thoughts from pain,
The shroud of heat consuming who he was.

“I have to kill the witches’ child,” he croaked,
His throat so dry with heat it hurt to talk.

The bear’s eyes gleamed and glared at him.
“Blood is a juice of rarest quality,”[2] it said.

“You are a spirit bear,” Ruarther said.
“You have the strength to take this pain away.”

The bear just stared at him. Light streamed around
Its massive form and shimmered as the sun
Rose up above the mountain peaks and golden light
Blurred deep into the blue of winter sky.

“I’ll feed upon your pain,” the great bear said.
“I’ll feed upon the pain your hatred burns
Into the human and the dragon worlds.”

The fire behind it blazed a dance of flames.
The great bear turned and seemed to sway with winds
Not felt within Ruarther’s winter world.
It roared, the sound so loud if shook a crest
Of snow and sent it plummeting from off
The ridge above Ruarther’s camp, a cloud
That stung Ruarther’s skin and chilled the shroud
Wrapped round his burning flesh and mind.

Ruarther gasped. He could not breathe. The cold
Of nothingness pierced deep into his bones.
He felt as if he had no eyes or ears,
As if his human senses had dissolved
Into a void where men did not belong.
The bear was in the void, a monstrous shape
That had no form, but whirled into a wind
That was no wind, but ash that heaped its blackness
Into a glittering beside a fire
That wisped with smoke into the freezing skies.

Ruarther’s lungs gasped air. He shuddered, gulped
The bitter cold into his lungs as if
It was ambrosia, life, unexpected joy!
He was amazed to feel that he was still
Alive, a human not possessed by spirits
That roamed the earth in search of human souls.
He touched his arm. His flesh was hot.
He flinched to feel the pain his touch could cause.
His weariness ached deep inside his mind
And made each joint and bone seem brittle, sore,
But he felt cold. The shroud of fiery heat
Had dissipated when the bear turned back
Into the ash he’d risen from to life.

What now? He asked himself. He was alone.
The fields of snow were blinding bright with sun.
He had to have a fire to stay alive.
The huge, black dragon dove out of the dark
Toward the boulder that he hid behind.
He closed his eyes and felt the wind of wings
That lifted blackness through the moonlit skies.
He had to end the dragon threat of war.
Inside his universe of pain he’d kept that chant.
He glanced toward his bow and deadly arrows.

The bear had given back his life and will.
He’d kill the witches’ child. He’d kill the child.
He smiled. He’d rest; then, with the coming dawn,
He’d start the journey to the meadow where
A cottage sat below the caves of dragons.
He’d drive an arrow through the child’s black heart.

1 This passage was inspired by Jonathan Edwards’ famous sermon, “The Future Punishment of the Wicked Unavoidable and Intolerable,” delivered in 1741.
2 From Scene IV of Faust by Johanne Wolfgang von Goethe.

To listen to this section click Inside the Furnace.

Note: This is the twentieth installment of a long narrative poem. Inspired by John Keats’ long narrative poem, Lamia, it tells a story set in ancient times when dragons and humans were at peace. Click on the numbers below to reach other sections, or go to the Categories box to the right under The Dragon Epic. Click on 1 to go to the beginning and read forward. Go to 19 to read the installment before this one. To read the next installment, click on 21.

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