Threshold Crossing
Sara Wright
In the Company of Bears
who thunder past my tent,
I am thrown into prayer.
Rooted in dark space,
shattered by Light.
The Power of Love
to dissolve boundaries
a solitary Presence,
in this place where possibility
crosses the Threshold of Becoming
a Moment in Time.
who thunder past my tent,
I am thrown into prayer.
Rooted in dark space,
shattered by Light.
The Power of Love
to dissolve boundaries
a solitary Presence,
in this place where possibility
crosses the Threshold of Becoming
a Moment in Time.
Working notes
Because I study bears from my bedroom window, which is always open and is situated behind my head, I am privy to the bears who roam around my house romping and sparring during mating time all through the spring and early mid-summer nights. Sometimes one or two of them will come to the screen behind my head to wake me up for more food. The second-year cubs seem particularly curious and often peer in this window. Some adults do the same. Sometimes, as I listen to bear conversation after darkness, I feel myself slipping out of time as we normally experience it and into what I call “the space in between.” This poem was written as an attempt to describe the indescribable, the unconditional love I experience with bears. This poem also attempts to describe what happens when Nature collapses the boundaries between fields - in this case the field of bears, and my human field and Love becomes all there is.
About the author
Sara Wright is a lifetime naturalist/ethologist (a person who studies behavior patterns of animals in the wild), who has been doing independent research on Black bears for 14 years. She also belongs to the North American Bear Center (bear.org) and offers an hour-long presentation about bears called “Dispelling the Myths about the Black Bear.” She lives in the western mountains of Maine in a small log cabin overlooking brook, field, and forest. She taught Women’s Studies at the university level for many years. She is also a Jungian Archetypal Pattern Analyst. She has a private practice, “Rootwork,” that she hopes will help women find their way in the world.