For Dr. Eric Cheeho Kim

Does our six-foot bear mind getting drenched?
This is what I ask at midnight, my head throbbing,
rain flinging its tirade aslant against the panes.
Since Halloween he’s camped under the pond deck
like some wayward deity, coming out to plop heavily
into the cold, black waters, then standing shoulder-deep
and swiveling his neck to catch the flash of trout
we’ve raised from fingerlings—raised not to eat 
but to rob the summer mosquitoes of our flesh.
It’s pouring down sheets now, but I can hear him
lumbering across the planks—it’s not thunder—
the yellow map of India on his chest probably
shining its strange beacon, and isn’t he a lord of 
some sort? Isn’t he the wilderness we came to desire,
though not in XX Large, not so roughshod and sour
faced, not reeking of musk and garbage and brute force?
Something about him makes me sad and happy,
as if his mortal stench could pluck me out of myself
and transform me into a goddess of prophecies.
But that’s just my painkillers talking, as the rain
pummels this hungry bear eschewing sleep,
who blinks away streamers of water as he turns 
his slurred gaze to my lit window, as he issues
his sodden grunts into the patter, and later loosens
a pyramid of steaming shit next to my poet’s bench.