The Summer Day
Mary Oliver
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 washed 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, and how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else have I done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what it is you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
I love this Oliver poem because I cannot always answer the last question with conviction, but it always makes me consider giddily all the possibilities. I embrace this as an invitation to explore, muse, wonder, delve. I think we'll be doing a great deal of that all summer long. I welcome it.
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