Mary Oliver: Spring

Spring

   
Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring

 

down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring

 

I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue

 

like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:

 

how to love this world.
I think of her 
rising
like a black and leafy ledge

 

to sharpen her claws against 
the silence
of the trees.
Whatever else

 

my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its cities,

 

it is also this dazzling darkness
coming 
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;

 

all day I think of her –
her white teeth,
her wordlessness,
her perfect love.

 

- Mary Oliver