The Bears Poem by Knute Skinner

Not my father but my mother.
That's who you see on the footpath,
holding my hand while I look at the bears.

Old and overexposed.
The snapshot, I mean, not my mother.
About her, I can nothing say.
I was still in pipe curls.

I do remember the bears.
They were large and dark and I didn't like
their heavy, deliberate movements.
When one of them came near the barrier,
Mother tightened her grip and said,
'Do you see the bear?'

Mother looks like a bear herself in that long dark coat.
Of course it would make you think
that she was my father.

But it wasn't even my father who took the picture.
He was gone by then - somewhere in South America.
If he had taken the picture, it would be in focus.