APHORISIMS, ADAGES, MAXIMS, & PAVLOV’S SILVERTIP

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Here today,
gone tomorrow. What goes around
comes around. An eye for an eye,
a tooth for a tooth, and man is not the one
and only large carnivore
who cannot live on bread alone,
whose home is where the heart is,
in Montana, where grizzlies have learned to—
because you can’t teach an old dog
new tricks, but that saw doesn’t hold
water for an old sow—come a-running
toward rifle-shot dinner bell
gut piles during elk season
when the early bear, as the saying goes,
always get the liver. In Montana, big
bad wild canines, and felines, also know
urban sprawl happy hour
precedes supper is served
at the all-you-can-eat ranchette estates
buffet, where it’s okay to bite
the hand that feeds you—Purina-fed puppy chow,
late-night snackies, appetizers, canapés,
kitty-milk aperitifs, fluffy
butterball dogs and Reeboked joggers
a la carte. Sometimes a carnivore’s
eyes are way bigger
than its stomach. Sometimes you
eat the bear, sometimes
the bear eats you. Beauty, you see,
truly is in the eye of the beholder
beholding the watched
pot boiling over.