The Summer Day
Posted: 06/21/2011 Filed under: Nature, Poetry 5 Comments »A summer solstice favorite… Happy summer, everyone!
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 on 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, House of Light (1990)
A nice poem I enjoyed reading it.
Glad you enjoyed it — Mary Oliver is the best!
beautiful imaginations, well done..
come join poets rally today.
Mary Oliver is the author of the poem — I believe I was somehow placed on Poet’s Rally, but the poem is not mine. Thank you for reading, however — Mary Oliver is amazing!
oh my……… every words you’ve write drowned me into your precious imagination…
i feel the warmth of summer, although there is no summer in my country…..