Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

Bear Story #1: My friend Matthew and I leave a party in Sugar Hill, New Hampshire. Driving in the middle of the forest, we blast Jay Z’s Black Album into the night air. A rainstorm makes the dirt road jerky with muddy ruts. Just as I mouth “Che Guevara with bling on, I'm complex I never claimed to have wings on,” a bear leaps in front of the car. I slam on the brakes. It stares and stares then runs into the bushes. Feeling lucky we’ve crossed paths with a bear and survived, we belt out “Now can I get an encore? Do you want more?”

Bear Story #2: At an environmental conference in upstate New York, I read a poem aloud about driving with a friend through the dark in New England when a bear suddenly came out of the woods. From the lectern, I notice everyone collectively crane their necks, then open their mouths in disbelief. I stop and follow their eyes. As if conjured out of my poem, a massive bear has lumbered out of the forest and onto the lawn, and now up on two hind legs, wriggles his back against a birch tree. He slides up and down then sits as though awaiting the rest of the reading.

Bear Story #3: On the last night of workshops in Olympic Valley in California, attendees recite from memory a favorite poem. Wedged in a large circle, I read out “Birches” by Robert Frost. Afterward, with my phone as a flashlight, I lead a group of us on a descending trail to the Village Inn. After ten minutes, we see a small bear leap onto a douglas fir. Our destination is visible beyond the trailhead, across the road. To turn back would mean climbing a mountain. I suggest we make ourselves big and sing “Imagine” while running towards the road beneath the bear. Our singing is awful. The bear claws higher up the tree.

Today’s poem reminds me of wildlife and humans who exist in our imagination as dangerous, how we eradicate or disappear those we fear, in our efforts to control our environments. Yet, their presence is magic, and can be irrepressible joy.

Objects in the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear
by Alleliah Nuguid

Convexity of meaning: objects are larger than
they are in mirror, the mirror reducing
them to perceived insignificance as

in Western culture bigger—thus better;
the contrapositive holds: it assumes 
not better is not bigger, or further,

objects that are not larger than they
appear are not objects in mirror—thus
to reduce an object, place it in the rear

view mirror; to increase its perceived 
size, take it away—
                                                        the trees they
sway, and I glimpse 

a fractioned decimal of this dance
circumscribed in the rearview; I look 
to make myself appear larger and you

smaller, so small that you are not
in my vision at all. “Even a bear
comes down from the mountain

when it is hungry,” I remember,
and in the mirror, perceive
a darkened pinprick of a bear

surfacing at mountain snow.
The trees they sway bereft
of leaves, their movements

distant shifts of bark.
With winter day comes winter dark.
Our car upon the highway arcs,

along the route we plotted on
the map. A measure of control.
We appear closer, larger.

“Objects in the Mirror are Closer Than They Appear” by Alleliah Nuguid from A HUMAN MOON, ©2024 Alleliah Nuguid. Used by permission of Dynamo Verlag.