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 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, how to look and listen, how to walk in the light of the world, how to love the earth and be happy. I think it is a prayer. And in that first teetering, I think it is a prayer. And in that first teetering on the verge of there. In this world, this world so much like the beautiful. Wow.

I don’t know where it goes or how I will get back but I can never forget the summer day that was full of sun and the singing of birds. I have to believe there is a healing that happens if I sit in that grass, that quiet, when the grasshopper opens her wings and I am full of wonder.

What will you do with your one wild and precious life?

• Mary Oliver