how to love this world

Two days ago I made vegetable curry for the first time ever. It was tasty and my whole family liked it. Honestly, I had never used coconut milk in a recipe before. I know that may be shocking but I'm a girl who lived my entire senior year in college eating almost exclusively Doritos and Minute Rice . . . soooo . . .

Yesterday we welcomed the first day of Spring.

Today is National Poetry Day and the sun is shining. Also today — Izzy relaxed on the couch with her tongue sticking out in that incredibly adorable way animals sometimes do.

Tomorrow is Friday and nobody can be uncheered on a Friday.

Yes, I'd say there is much to celebrate this windy week in March.


~
 

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 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. 


"Spring" by Mary Oliver, from New and Selected Poems. © Beacon Press, 1992.