Poem of the Month ~ July 2009

Mary Oliver, with her knack for mining the details of daily life and the natural world, composes poetry that can blow the ol’ circuits and bust through walls built of oblivion.   As you let the power of this poem sink in, you just may fall in love her questions,

take them to heart

and bless your one wild, precious life!

--Krayna

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 – From House of Light, 1990