"Hooray Cassandra!"
Bliss in Solitude: "The Summer Day" by Mary Oliver
This is my favorite poem by the great nature poet Mary Oliver (1935--).
Oliver’s poetry always is able to find bliss in solitude because she has such a keen eye for the life—and also the mortality—of the nonhuman world around her.
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 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?
Comment
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Comment by Caroline Bock on June 20, 2011 at 6:18am -
Tell me, what is it you pla n to
With your one wild and precious life?"
I love the idea of life being both wild and precious.
I love the question posed at the and, kneeling in the grass, not knowing exactly what prayer is and this poem being in itself a prayer. I don't know what prayer is either, but I know to be kneel in the grass, or write.
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Comment by Carole Spearin McCauley on May 11, 2011 at 2:11pm -
Magnificent Mary Oliver poem. I cared enough long ago to cut out and frame the final two lines--"Tell me, what is it you plan to do With your one wild and precious life?"--so I can see them daily.
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Comment by Lesley-Anne Evans on May 2, 2011 at 11:09am -
Mary Oliver has been and continues to be an inspiration to me… deep, yet not unattainable. Thank you for sharing her work.
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Comment by Padmavani Karkera on May 2, 2011 at 2:25am -
Beautiful!
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