The Summer Day
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 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?
1 comment:
I like the Mary Oliver poem, and it seems like something Thorn might think in his quieter moments. I just reader Oliver's book on metrical poetry, RULES OF THE DANCE, and it led me to create this joke:
A poet walks into a bar and asks the bartender, "Where can I get a double ionic?" The bartender jerks his head and says "In the back room."
It's a joke about metrical feet--the bartender's comment should be stressed da-da DUH DUH--a double ionic is a pyrrhic foot coupled to a spondee. Hilarious, right?
Anyway, I have enjoyed all the Thorn novels, and am glad to see I'm actually 2 behind.
Cheers
Scott Colburn
Ambridge, PA
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