National Poetry Month

[brigdh]

The Summer Day

 by 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 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 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?


Comments

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

It isn't Spring enough yet here for this poem, and the grasshoppers of summer will be the grasshopper of Apollo, but I have lived this poem, save for the offering of sugar.
Thank you, Brigdh!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Spring is coming and going here, but I can't wait until it stays!

[bladderwrack.livejournal.com]

That is quite lovely, and I have never heard it before; however,

the last two lines are posted on an office door in our department, with the answer 'learn German, of course!" appended, handwritten.

|D

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha! That's awesome.