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?
Sometimes it's a good idea to hold on to a thing, to keep the obvious tucked away until the time isn't merely good, rather, exquisitely perfect, to make your oblation. Then, you can pull out what has been saved with a flourish and cry, "Voila!" turning something ubiquitous into something magical.
In as many times as I've posted a Mary Oliver poem on this blog, I've shied away from "The Summer Day," preferring to offer poems that are less well known and definitely less well quoted. But something about this morning's clear blue sky, the breeze ruffling the grass, the sound of the cicadas in the maple tree outside my bedroom window, and the work I have to do the rest of the day made me realize it is indeed the perfect day for "The Summer Day."
Voila! I give you the magic of Mary Oliver.
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| A particular eastern tiger swallow tail visiting my wildflower garden |
times before. As with many people, I'm often left pondering the punch of the poem's last lines. What captured my attention today though were the stepping stones of the first lines, that movement from the universal (literally) to the particularity of one specific grasshopper.
So, rather than viewing little details as distractions that lead me away from the picture work I have to do today, the invitation to me is to see in the particulars the opportunity to pay attention. Quite a challenge for an Enneagram 7 and a Myers Briggs INFP but I'll give it a go, because who am I to argue with a Mary Oliver poem?
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