“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.

by Mary Oliver