How Old Is The Bear Scat? Poem by L C Vieira

How old is the bear scat? I ask you,
looking around, one eye wary.
Old, you say. I act like I knew.

You once called me Zoom-Zoom, years ago.
You taught me to
slow down
stop
look up
and around.

Some things I missed before.

There are clear puddles on the wind-blown tarp.
You stop me excitedly mid-sentence,
then apologize shyly for wanting me to see -

a world of 'somethings' - little brown specs -
hundreds of them in these puddles.
You point to the life moving about, jumping -
the brave ones on the edge.

They're gone the next day.

What were they? I ask.
You don't know, you say,
but they're not mosquitoes -
or those nasty flies -
you know where I draw
the line.

(2012, at the cabin)