'On The Tenth Anniversary of the Bear Cam, Brooks Falls, Alaska' by Amy Marsh

Jo starts her day curled up with coffee and laptop, all the bear cams loaded on her computer screen like a bank of TVs in the store. The camera names are simple but Jo thinks they convey a blunt poetry, although she is not positive where poetry begins and ends. Waterfall, Lower Waterfall, Ripples, River, Lower River, Underwater, Mountain. Occasionally, especially at the beginning of the season, a camera shows no bear, or only generic bears in the grass, nothing special. Often a bear is in the river staring at the waterfall. They do this a lot, that is the point of this park, but Jo admires how neither the absence of fish nor the monotony of staring deters the bears. Eventually there will be fish. She stares the same way, awaiting her reward. Quick closeup of bear hindquarters in murky water. A yearling swimming, backlit by sunrise. Three bears stroll, one stalking two. Jo wonders who else is up so early. Each camera displays the number of viewers, and when one camera’s number suddenly skyrockets, she quickly clicks to feature it. The sunrise is so orange it seems fake, and two bears are mating on the far beach. Or the rear bear is mating; the smaller front bear is a repository, a creature to be humped over. The volunteer camera operator might be anywhere in the world, and from the twitch of the camera and the sudden zooming, Jo knows the operator is being enveloped by the same thrill, and really 998 of us are sharing this, we are in this together and Jo thinks, so this is what it means to forge a mystical connection.