Sherry Chandler » Ursula
Ursula
Gin Petty has been asking to see photos of the grandbabies but I hope never to have to approach them close enough to get pictures. To compensate, here’s a photo of Ursula, whom we suspect of being the mama. The foot is my husband’s. The time was June 2003.
“Ursula” means little female bear. My son suggested that I use this poem, because it is about a slightly larger female bear.
Skin Out a Woman
Callisto is a bear now.
Pigeon-toed, nearsighted,
rippling with muscles and fat,
she births, suckles in her sleep,
lives on human trash and honey,
fur too thick to feel the sting of outraged bees.
That string of nightingales, trees,
and bears the gods left in their trail–
was there no desire?
Can even a god make you into some
thing you don’t want to be?
When I rise up from the bed and
must walk bent until
my muscles stretch and
I can walk straight,
I would be a bear and go on four legs,
rise only to nibble grapes from the high vine.
My father was a bear,
growling through my nights,
taciturn, given to sudden rage.
My mother was something lighter–
a mockingbird perhaps–fluttering,
singing through her days.
When I bend and try to rise and
must wait until
my hip pops
cracking in its socket,
I would be a bear–no frilly apron,
no sweet-smelling garden with orderly borders–
throat-ripping big fat honey-licking black-fur
living in a cave full of rabbit bones.
—from Dance the Black-Eyed Girl
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