Bugbear
My bugbear really is a bear, but it does more than bug me.
When I take a walk in woods, I fear that one will hug me.
I shake in terror every time I hear a dry branch crack,
afraid that I might have a bear descend upon my back.
My footsteps are deliberate. I do not want attention,
fearing that a grizzly bear will demand my detention.
At church camp I stayed with the group as we walked to chapel,
imagining a black bear with his sharp claws like a scalpel
ripping through my backpack and shredding through my tee,
getting down to business. Getting down to me.
When father saw something was wrong as he heard my confession,
he said that i could tell him all, that it was his profession
to listen to the foibles and the fears of kids like me.
Whatever worries I might have, he could set me free.
And so I told everything—my excessive worry
that I might encounter something clawed and toothed and furry.
Then he disqualified my fears and did it in a hurry,
by saying that God put no bears in central Missouri!!!!
Prompts today are bugbear, profession, disqualified, deliberate, shake, chapel. Image by Mana on Unsplash.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 
God lied~! just to save the fears of a pitiful little girl~!
Once way up north in Canada I was reconnoitering a project and when I turned back onto my tracks, there were grizzly bear paw prints over mine.. I was being followed~! Those prints were almost a foot across and YES, I WAS afraid.. Fortunately my little Bombardier snow cat was nearby, so I jumped into it and put distance between me and him~!
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I’m not crazy about the chance of encountering a bear. A good thing about San Diego County was no bears.
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Here thought? Where I stayed when I first arrived, in the field where I walked my dogs there were often bear tracks and down along the slough by the river by the driving range? Bear tracks and scat. Sometimes they come into our town looking for apples. The cops had to lure one down from an apple tree a few years back…
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