American Poet, a naturalist, so much of Mary Oliver's poems reflect her love and awareness of nature. One can also find a sense of fundamentality, centering - simplicity that is felt after living or experiencing life in Ohio.Some of her poems remind me of my childhood summers -- mspent in and around the farms in the suburbs near Columbus. Bamboo poles near the creek! worms! frogs and beer can collecting...
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"
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?
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Lovely thoughts.
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