July 14: Poet of the Week Mixup, Mary Oliver, "The Summer Day"

You know, yesterday I named my mentor and friend Beverly Matherne as Poet of the Week.  I got a little turned around on my days because of my trip to Sault Ste. Marie on Tuesday and Wednesday.  I am going to save Beverly Matherne for next week.

Mary Oliver is still Poet of the Week for a couple more days.  I'm sorry about the mix-up, not that anybody really cares.  I do, and that's all that matters on this summer evening.

As I said last night, it's going to be a really busy weekend, so I'm not going to have a whole lot of downtime at all.  The kind of downtime that's supposed to accompany summer.  That's the way it always goes for me.

So, Saint Marty has a poem about a grasshopper, because grasshoppers know how to enjoy summer.

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?