It was Earth Day, and a huge wave of dense white mist was rolling in from the sea again. Soon it would cover everything, and both land and sea would be obscured. Algy perched at the edge of the dunes, watching the mist approach, and wondering whether human beings would manage to avoid destroying their own home. Their ways bewildered him; all he could do was hope for the best, because he rather liked the Earth himself. As he felt the first cold droplets of the mist tickle his feathers, he thought of a poem by a particularly talented and thoughtful human, 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.

[Algy is quoting the poem Spring from the collection House of Light by the contemporary American poet Mary Oliver.]

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