Summer

A Sunday Amen

Poem 133: 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

I have always loved this poem… and I have never taken the last question more seriously than now.

Here is mine…

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Hot pavement, living to die…

no not I.

My life has just begun.

Let me be the worker ant in the blazing sun.

You as my shield

the grasshopper of the field.

A bird in the rain

who doesn’t complain.

Swimming in belief

a seahorse without a reef.

Lying in green grass

living to trust You at last!

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Look up - Fujix