Close Reading

It is morning in the meadow,
And the silver shadow of an upright
Juniper skeleton retreats.

I am as Ellen Bass’s grizzly,
So calm I could be holy,
Except that, unlike her grizzly,

And more like her grizzly’s poet, I think
About holiness, about what
We imagine our imaginary

Terms to mean when we paint them
All over our bodies in ink or all
Over our natural scenes, such as

A grizzly bathing her head in a stream,
Witnessed thanks to the hidden
Camera coming into existence

In the poem only when drops shaken
By the bear on the lens obscure
The poet’s wholly unselfconscious scene.