Spring (Monday Poem)

 by Mary Oliver

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 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.

from Devotions: the Selected Poems of Mary Oliver

Penguin, 2017