Welcome to April’s Poem of the Month!
We have had some glorious days recently here in Seattle. We wait through months of grey, cold and wet to get to days like these. As I was walking downtown in the sunlight yesterday, I found myself just simply smiling at the warmth and brightness – the light enforcing a joyous tone on the moment. I recalled recently reading this poem, and thought it was an appropriate Poem of the Month to welcome in Spring.
Warmest regards,
Stewart
Mary Oliver
(1935 – )
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.
