After working in the fields, looking at the gorgeous clay oven that Mary, Anders, Christian, and Augie worked on today, I decided to pick up some poetry tonight as an out breath this summer day. The first poem I began to contemplate is by Mary Oliver, a native of Maple Heights, Ohio.
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 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?
This is a great poem, with much to think about...Thank you for posting it, Farmer Jake!
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