Spring, a timely love poem by Mary Oliver, is about a bear and not about a bear. Rather, Mary Oliver imagines herself having the bear‘s experience, a pure physical sensation of the freshness and richness of springtime. And part of that is, of course, breathing, the steady inner and outer flow amidst the apparent, bursting energy.
Another aspect of the poem is also related to breathing, namely the way Mary Oliver feels herself connected to the bear in a shared sense of aliveness. This naturally includes breathing, a shared breathing with the other. And this makes me believe her when she says, “There is only one question:// how to love this world.”
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.
Source: Spring, by Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press, 2004