​The Woman and the Bear, by Ursula Shepherd

Due Respect, by Ann DiSalvo (USA) contemporary

​The Woman and the Bear
                                                            
Have you ever spied them there in early light
out in that grassy field between the hills?
 
Have you seen the woman, face upturned, body ripe 
in contemplation as she greets the day?
 
Or her familiar? The silent bear who sits 
nearby, the spirit guide who walks with her. 
 
Did you see?  There is no fear between them. He knows her 
full revealed. She breathes in the gifts he brings.
 
Some say he is her lover. Some whisper 
she’s a witch. How else explain a woman’s power?
 
I say, they are simply kindred, each tied 
to earth and air, both sentient, and aware.

Ursula Shepherd

Ursula Shepherd knew before she was nine, she would write all her life, and she has, but life took her away from poetry as she followed her love of nature and became an ecologist and biogeographer. Now she writes to stay sane in this chaotic world. She was drawn to this particular painting for several reasons, not least of which was the fact that, maybe because her name means bear, she has always been fascinated  by them as totems.  Her poetry has appeared in, among others, Big Wing Review, Passionfruit, Unbroken, Sheila-Na-Gig, and The Ekphrastic Review.