my one wild and precious life...

As I was looking over my last blog post to see if there was anything I absolutely had to change, I heard my Grandmother's voice whispering soft and papery in my mind's ear: "You would wish your life away if you could."  It made me think of this poem and I had the need to share:

The Summer Day

by 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 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?


You know, it's just that I want to see how everything turns out at the end, like flipping to the last pages of a novel.  Then I can relax and enjoy the ride, grasshopper that I am.