Tender by Sophie Klahr

Tender
Sophie Klahr

I spend late morning weeping with the news:
a black bear with burnt paws is euthanized
along the latest wildfire’s newest edge.
It was crawling on its forearms, seeking
a place to rest. I Google more; reports
leak out: the bear had bedded down behind
a house, below a pine, to lick its paws.
In hours before its end, officials named
it Tenderfoot, though some reports report
just Tender. Later, I will teach a class
where we’ll discuss the lengths of lines in poems.
I’ll say a sonnet is a little song
to hold a thing that otherwise cannot
be held: a lonely thing; a death; a bear.

MARGINALIA

1.
Some grief arrives too gently to be defended against. A single line in the news. A creature with a name. A body trying to rest. I read these stories and suddenly I’m not myself.

2.
I’ve been thinking about what it means to name a thing before it dies. Even if no one’s watching. Even if it changes nothing.

3.
There are moments when I don’t know what else to do but cry for the way the world keeps burning, and how we keep trying to find beauty in the ash.

4.
Maybe this is all we can do. And by that I mean: carry tenderness in a poem.

5.
I want to believe there’s still mercy left in the world. Even if it only looks like a pine tree. Or a name. Or a weeping.