Spring continues to unfold,  with the absorbing music of life bubbling just beneath the surface.  I feel it.

Parker J. Palmer’s words resonated deeply with me this morning as he wrote the following words as a prelude to Mary Oliver’s poem – both his words and Mary’s poem follow.   They speak to me of of season of rebirth in northwest Montana and of Love.

“Spring arrived on my patch of the planet last week, but it’s 25° here as I write! To encourage the season to show up more fully, here’s Mary Oliver with her spot-on description of “the brisk and shallow restlessness of early spring.”

I’m especially grateful for the profound reminder in the pivotal line of this poem: “There is only one question: how to love this world.”

Oliver illustrates love for the world not with a Valentine sentiment, but with a black bear “just risen from sleep” coming down the mountain with “her white teeth, her wordlessness, her perfect love.”

Wild animals “love the world” because they depend on it for their well-being. We are dependent, too, no matter how arrogantly we pretend that we are self-sufficient.

There’s only one way for us to survive and thrive. We must learn to love the earth and each other with the ferocity of a mother bear—saying “NO!” to everything that threatens that which we love, and “YES!” to all that gives it life…”

-Parker J. Palmer

“Somewhere a black bear has just risen from sleep and is staring

down the mountain. All night in the brisk and shallow restlessness of eary spring

I think of her, her four black fists flickering 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  black and leafy lodge

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.”

-Mary Oliver