The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean -
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down -
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
– Mary Oliver
I love Mary Oliver…thanks for this one. I’m going to go out and live my wild and precious life.
amen and amen
Isn’t Mary wonderful? I really like the question at the end. And pretty soon, I really must answer it satisfactorily. I do so want to have this wild and precious life BE wild and precious. Does mild and semi-precious count? I don’t think so. How to be idle and blessed…stroll through the fields….ah….I have the idle thing down today.