ROBERT OSTROM, FEATURED IN THE NEW OCEAN STATE REVIEW
The Reincarnations of Mink the Bear
in my last dream as a man
I am a boy again
standing in the garage
with my granddad our
faces dirty from hulling
black walnuts by the forest
the old man hands me
a heavy sac of earth
and says lose everything
when I open it I find
the room where I sleep
my light my ceiling
my walls this life
is guesswork and nested
dreams in the next one
give me hunger over
ease so I might know
what I want make me
a bloodhound buzzard
a dung beetle I want
to understand where I am
I have already been
practicing a celestial dance
in the yard
under the Milky Way
wake me up
in any swirling galaxy I
know now what it means
to be home the trees I feel
reaching inside of me
the ones I love my family
their roots covered in me
Robert Ostrom on “The Reincarnations of Mink the Bear”:
It all started with an old man feeding a black bear birdseed and maple-glazed donuts in Hanover, New Hampshire. This continued for years until the man died, and the bear along with her offspring roamed into Hanover’s neighborhoods, feasting on birdfeeders, getting into trashcans, and politely walking up to doors and waiting patiently to receive a snack. Locals affectionately named the sow Mink after the Mink Brook Nature Preserve. When two of her cubs entered someone’s home in 2017, wildlife officials decided that Mink and her cubs needed to be euthanized. However, after public outcry, the governor of New Hampshire granted the sleuth a pardon. The cubs were relocated and Mink remained in the area until 2018. That year, it was discovered that Mink was training a new litter how to forage for food from people’s homes. These cubs were brought to a bear preserve and rehabilitation center, and Mink was tranquilized, outfitted with an orange tracking collar, and relocated to Coos county near the Canadian border. When my friend first told me this story, Mink was making her way back to Hanover, logging thousands of meandering miles, stopping to hibernate along the way, and continuing on after winter.
I covet the single-mindedness of animals. Bears like Mink aren’t alone in their mysterious ability to orient themselves homeward from unfamiliar faraway places. On spring nights, listen closely and you might hear the whispers of thousands of migratory birds returning to their birthplaces. Some young sea life relinquish control to the ocean currents while other fish migrate by deliberately moving against the currents. The dung beetle knows exactly where it wants to go; it stands on its dung ball, does a little dance, looks up to the stars, and continues on its way.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I checked in on Mink; she was back in Hanover, keeping to her home range. Being locked down wasn’t the hard part for me. I don’t like to leave my house, and with a newborn and a toddler, with so much worry and uncertainty, I was content to keep them safe at home. In fact, despite the piles of laundry and clutter in our all-too-small apartment, this might have been the first time I felt at home in a long time. But then I had a health scare, the kind that makes you think you might not be around much longer. I remember the distinct feeling of sliding— away from my life, my home, my partner, my children. The thought that I might leave them without me was incredibly agonizing. Would I be relocated? If so, how would I ever find my way back?
During this difficult time, I started thinking about reincarnation, and this poem owes a debt to the children’s book The Mountains of Tibet by Mordicai Gerstein. Based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, this picture book about death and rebirth steered me into a mild obsession with Tibetan funerary rituals and the journey through the bardos. One morning about a year later, as I was sitting at my desk trying to write without much luck, Mink popped into my head. Where was she now? What was she up to? I googled her only to learn that her body had been found on a gravel bar in the Mascoma River.
With this poem, I set out to write Mink’s journey but I kept getting myself tangled in it. I didn’t want to anthropomorphize (a thing that’s especially easy to do with bears), but there was something about what pulled Mink back to her home range that I understood differently. Initially, the logic of the poem made me uneasy—but I’m learning that relinquishing myself to bewilderment, to being lost, is necessary, and in the end, I find hope in the possibility that there is something in me that knows what it wants, will orient itself homeward, which is inward, and no matter what happens to this body, the love I have for my family is perennial.
Robert Ostrom is the author of Sandhour (Saturnalia Books, 2019), Ritual and Bit (Saturnalia Books, 2016) and The Youngest Butcher in Illinois (YesYes Books, 2012). He lives in Ridgewood, New York and teaches at New York City College of Technology.
Read more here: https://www.robertostrompoet.com/
Photo: Mink the bear: https://www.necn.com/news/local/mink-the-black-bear-found-dead-in-nh/2316149/