SPRING 2012

Today at 05:14 Universal Time, the vernal equinox arrived, one of two points in the earth's orbit at which the earth's axis is pointed neither toward, nor away from the sun (see illustration above, click to enlarge).  Thus has begun Spring, my favorite season of the year ~ the time of newborn life, flowers and returning greenery, and warmer days.


In celebration, I offer two poems whose central icon is .... the bear


POINT

Spring

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 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 hairy ledge

to sharpen her claws against

the silence

of the trees.

Whatever else

my life is

with its poems

and its music

and its 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.

COUNTERPOINT

Survivor

by Robert Mitchum

He's an old blind bar,

alone in the woods,

with only the smell of his breath for comfort.

Too mean to die.

Too lost to care.

But show some caution!

He's still the bear!