Most people don't realise

Sixty percent of all European brown bears
have unfulfilled ambitions; in Romania,
they are known to harangue the mainstream
poetry presses – gutting bin bags, churning
up the slush pile with paws the size of
the Norton anthology. Some poets, dimly,
believed the bears would settle for a mention.

The bear holds ground in the Somes river,
hears salmon flick past
like silver bullets, claps one from its flight,
has it headless but
still fighting, a thoughtless muscle,
that struggles in his gut.

The bears took exception to the simile: it naturalizes
the unnatural, as though it is all God's
glorious menagerie, that our rugs should soften
the reception rooms of publishing corporations
for whom, in all likelihood, the mainstream
poetry presses are a subsidiary. It is too ironic,
they said.