Bear
for Stewart Harris
Betrayal will happily walk with you,
knows your patterns, the roof-runs
and dead ends of conflict. Conflict
will lift you skyward, then lay you down
on the broken dirt. Stew woke clean white
and wondered if this was hell. The bear
in the next bed explained it was Birmingham
and over weeks they reminisced, became
firm friends. When it was time, the bear
came home with him and was too big
for the house. The bear blundered about
breaking ornaments, cracked its head
against the light, sent shadows skittering
about the walls. The bear brooded and
the children shrank back from its rancid breath
which made the bear roar. The rooms
of the house became dead ends. One night
Stew placed his hand into the bear’s paw
and together they walked to the edge
of the sea and were the most sorrowful sight
the sea had ever seen. The sea took pity
and let them step into her low swell.
They clung together while the sea
murmured about home until the bear
struck out for the moonlit horizon. Stew
stood alone on the kitchen floor, water pooled
about him. He was so tired, his own undone
shoelaces were an unfathomable conundrum.
Martin Figura’s collection and show Whistle was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and won the 2013 Saboteur Award for Best Spoken Word Show. Shed (Gatehouse Press) and Dr Zeeman’s Catastrophe Machine (Cinnamon Press) were published in 2016. He lives in Norwich with sciatica. Website: www.martinfigura.co.uk
Notes: This is from a sequence of poems commissioned by the Army Benevolent Fund – The Soldiers’ Charity. 75th Anniversary.
This is Stew’s story: https://soldierscharity.org/stories/stewart-harris/
This is Stew: https://vimeo.com/290711236