Ruth  Wildes Schuler		THOUGHTS ON AN EPITAPH  (To My Grandmother, Sarah Wildes Hanged for Witchcraft on Gallows Hill,             Salem, Massachusetts)                   July 19, 1692 A stone bench with your name carved upon it now stands in a park next to the Salem cemetery near the harbor. Your name is not upon any tombstone, for convicted witches were cast into unhallowed ground. Those spasmodic shrieking adolescents erased reason and sanity from the power-hungry religious fanatics who sat in judgment of innocent souls. History has sharpened our senses and removed the shrouds of specters, hallucinations and apparitions, sculptured in so-called righteous hysteria. Fourteen pounds was paid by the state to our family for your wrongful death and now three hundred hears later – this bench! It is not really enough of an epitaph after such a long opaque silence, Grandma Sarah, but it will have to do. Your legacy prevails. Your name endues now like the soft blue of the summer sky and the waves crashing against the Salem seawall at sunset.		GRIZZLY BEAR (URSUS HORRIBILIS) He needs no torchlight to illuminate the gallows on the horizon. Lean of belly,            he pushes muscles, fleeing from the satanic shadows, pursing him across the northern tundra. Oblivious to cruel winds filtering through his narrow jaws, he eludes the aura            of man’s ignorance that freezes fragments of fear into a coming massacre. Vagabond dignity hangs from his hollows on the silent journey toward the twilight circle, a Grizzly gladiator            abandoning catacombs, where ancient cousins lie fossilized.