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?

The first and last lines of this poem really hit me. I've got one

wild and precious life and with that I choose

to honor the Giver Of Life. My plan is to make good choices.

Choices that lead to having way to much fun, making

memories, to loving and being loved.

My SBXI symbolized that if I do say so myself!

Sosilly: Lee you have chocolate on your lip.

Ron: Sosina, you have whip cream all over your face.

We didn't know my Mom had zoomed in the pic so close.

Oh and I apologize for my rily eyebrows.

Unposed. In all our flamboyant sinking life-diaper glory.

Now that's a friend.

I'm not apologizing for being 20 years old and still eating

junkfood for dinner and reading 17 instead of Cosmo.

Oh those lovely lake days.

And of course, I couldn't enjoy life without hula hooping contests at Walmart.