Heard and enjoyed on Writers Almanac today read by Garrison Keillor

 "Spring," by Mary Oliver, from New and Selected Poems.

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.