Sovereign Bear

32 THEMISSOURIREVIEW SOVEREIGN BEAR / Carol Frost There is a bear before us we saw caged, lumberous; ears fly-sore, coat darkened by the loss of year long snows and by a residue of steel when he resisted the wall. Rocking to and fro, turtlenecked , immovable as a bolted-down toy, he seemed momentarily domesticated, until with a scary suddeness he turned his lord's eye on us and stood up pawing the air, as though he could dig himself through air out of our kingdom , stretched big as we might come to know in his gross land of snow and blood-hunger. Soulless , sovereign and so cunning, his mammal beauty makes us shudder. After his prey has tried to flee and felt the stinging, instinctual joy of his claw swing, this grim genius of killing eats, perfected, to kill again. For us there is nothing Carol Frost 33 everyday as vigilant or cruel. We stand near his childish hemisphere all changelings admiring the final brutishness behind the thin wall. What legendary ice or extinction now? The bear pads to his alien hut and lolls on the ground like an old torn, and we return to the city, degrees warmer in its center's misting glare. If we see it, what star will point us to the mad perimeter, the rime, where the beast learns to walk almost like a woman or man? ...