fears of the bear woman

All along there was a bear woman
with claws as long as the comma in
'I love you, but'
and a face as round and pocked
as daily-used dinnerware
and a big fat bear body
covered in fur -
and birds.
The birds sang beautifully,
and she sang, too -
though less well.
Her bear mother had told her that
if she hibernated
kept safe in her fur
the bear that went to bed
was not the bear that woke up
and obviously
there were the birds to think of.
Though flat-toothed, her big bear body
kept away the bird-killers,
the cold, the hungry,
but it also concealed something -
a desire to damn the birds
by sleeping in a cave
without waking.
The bear in the bear woman was to blame.
She wanted to divest herself of that.
She put those claws under her dinnerplate face
and dug down, to get the woman out of the bear,
but instead found -
as large as the furred body
that had harbored them -
an appetite for birdflesh.