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 glass 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