'Enduring odor'

“In late winter

I sometimes glimpse bits of steam

coming up from

some fault in the old snow

and bend close and see it is lung-colored

and put down my nose

and know

the chilly, enduring odor of bear.’’

-- From “Bear,’’ by Galway Kinnell (1927-2014)

Kinnell reading his poetry in the Grindstone Cafe in Lyndonville, Vt., on March 16, 2013. He lived in tiny (population about 700) Sheffield, Vt., in the state’s Northeast Kingdom. Kinnell, a Pulitzer Prize winner, served a stretch as Vermont’s poet laureate.

Labor Day parade at Sheffield Field Day 2017