“We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it…” from We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury
Children clap and sing,
excited by a bear hunt.
Listen to them chant:
Can’t go over it!
Can’t go under it!
Can’t go around!
You have to go through:
the tall grass, the mud,
the river, the forest,
the snowstorm.
The children clap and sing,
untroubled by the truth.
There are many things
you just have to go through.
A job loss, a break-up,
a doctor seeing spots
on a mammogram.
You just have to go through
before you can outrun the bear
and sip cocoa in the kitchen.
Jacqueline Jules is the author of Manna in the Morning (Kelsay Books, 2021) and Itzhak Perlman's Broken String, winner of the 2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize from Evening Street Press, and Smoke at the Pentagon: Poems to Remember (Bushel & Peck, 2023). Her poetry has appeared in over 100 publications. Visit www.jacquelinejules.com