Wednesday, July 30, 2008

your one wild and precious life

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 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?






2 comments:

Shark said...

Just to add:

these lines:

"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."

...remind me of two lines from the Sufi mystic poet Rumi:

"Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground."

Says it all.

xxoo
m

gert said...

ah el edwardo: you speak from the heart. donde esta la patti smith de auda? donde esta el punk quida de auda? xxoo gert