The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

I'm preparing today for the gathering together of a new group of home school students at our home. I'm hoping to share some of the joy and art of my favorite people. Mary Oliver's poetry entered my life a few years ago. Her words speak deeply into my soul. I shared this poem earlier, but offer it again today.

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 ~

(New and Selected Poems, Volume I)

Watching

I love Mary Oliver's poetry. It calls me to look, to expect the unexpected, to joy in the unknown surprises of life. I'm watching a menagerie of birds around the three-trunked tree that is home to our bird/squirrel feeder. A small grey squirrel jumps from the tree to the bird bath, has a drink, then returns to his vigilant attack on the feeder. The birds watch, like kindergartners on the playground, waiting for the big kids to go back inside so they can play on the monkey bars.

Why I Wake Early

by Mary Oliver

Hello, sun in my face.

Hello, you who make the morning

and spread it over the fields

and into the faces of the tulips

and the nodding morning glories,

and into the windows of, even, the

miserable and the crotchety-

best preacher that ever was,

dear star, that just happens

to be where you are in the universe

to keep us from ever-darkness,

to ease us with warm touching,

to hold us in the great hands of light-

good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day

in happiness, in kindness.

This is from Mary Oliver's "Why I Wake Early" published by Beacon Press, Boston.