Issue Two - October 2001

Your Own Best Lover

By White Bear Woman

From a song by Heather Bishop

If you live alone long enough
your own life begins to make love to you.
It starts as casually as any friendship,
gifts appear,
things you really love,
a candle, flowers.
You begin to move the furniture,
paintings, photographs,
rearranging for your own
pleasure what had been
agreed upon with another.
Then one night,
maybe in winter,
when snow makes the world
hold its tongue, and
the whole sky is filled
with the sharp light of the stars,
she comes to your bed.
When she
touches your nipple for the first time
you realize she is the best lover
you will ever have.
That moment is worth all the rest.
Each night after that,
when what is immense and undeniable
lumbers stubbornly toward the house,
coming close in with the dark,
together
you will turn on the light.

Copyright 2001 White Bear Woman

White Bear Woman has been writing poetry for most of her life. She has also been a university teacher, a carpenter, a cook on a fishing boat, a kayak guide, a licensed masseuse, a restaurant owner and more. Whatever she does, she doesn't dabble; she plunges all the way in. "I follow my passion and my heart and they've led me through my life," she says. "I haven't stayed on one path because different things have gotten my attention. That's where my poetry comes from --that place." She has had five books of poetry published.

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