This week ends National Poetry Month. In case you haven’t learned this about me yet, I’m a poetry hound. I find so often in poems the images or words that either escape me when I try to articulate a thought or feeling – or the images and words that open up something new and set my heart on fire. If you’ve never found your way to poetry I heartily recommend you give it a try – I’m always happy to make suggestions! One piece of my daily routine is the poem/prayer I receive every weekday via email from The Rev. Steve Garnaas-Holmes. You can find his work here (www.unfoldinglight.net). But for this week I thought I would share a poem that feels to me like resurrection as we continue our journey through the 50 days of Easter.
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 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?
Yours in God’s peace,
Kristin+