Extreme Ursine Unction by Todd Garland

Extreme Ursine Unction

A stony eve at the Bedlam Ball,
An ursine scene entrancing,
As all about the charnel hall
The bears they were a dancing.

Under spectral candle lights
Polar bears pas de deuxed,
While on the musty agéd pines
The bugbears bugalooed.

Russian bears reeled and rumbaed,
Grim Reaper made the scene,
And the Pandas pawed a polka piece
With the Faeries from Fiddler’s Green.

And the bears they were a dancing,
A dancing one and all,
With Death’s sweet hibernation,
At the Beldam’s Bedlam Ball.

Neo-Nazi berserker bears
Did a bounding bossa-nova,
Meth enthused and blind to death,
Little Adolf’s “fools ambrosia”.

When in came mushroom mantic—
Mr. Natural making his call—
Bearing his storied death-caps,
Tokens of the Fall.

He steeped a pot of pungent tea,
Quickened with a fatal breath,
And catered servings all around,
That we might learn of death.

And the bears they were a dancing,
A dancing one and all,
With Death’s sweet hibernation,
At the Beldam’s Bedlam Ball.

Then Grizzly bear cut a galliard,
While spinning an alibi,
A maid who waits, a memento mori:
Remember you must die.

Brown bear timbrelled a belly dance,
The stage was her copestone:
For in death we are defined entire,
Only then can all be known.

And Teddy Bear toed a tِten tod
To a dirge that he now knew:
Death is in us here and now
In the things we do not do.

And the bears they were a dancing,
A dancing one and all,
With Death’s sweet hibernation,
At the Beldam’s Bedlam Ball.

Long awash in the birth of battle
In time the nerves do drown,
In serenity of death accepted,
The Fay ones wisdom crown.

So the Koala bears joined the faeries,
In Destiny’s conga line,
Kenning fate, their place, and themselves
In the great design.

And the Wee Ones await your coming,
To Black bear’s black ballet,
Or a danse macabre with Kodiak,
In the enlightened realm of Fay.

And the bears they were a dancing,
A dancing one and all,
With Death’s sweet hibernation,
At the Beldam’s Bedlam Ball.

-Todd Garland -

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