It’s that time of the year when you start to take stock of the past year and look to the year ahead. It’s resolution season.
Anyone who knows me knows I spend way too much time thinking about what tomorrow may bring, and what I could (should) be doing to prepare for it. I know that’s not great – that being present and in the moment is more favorable (and healthier) than mulling over stuff that hasn’t even happened yet. Basically, I take stock of my life, where I’ve been and where I’m headed, way more frequently than just at the end of December.
So today I am going to share one of my favorite poems with you – The Summer Day by Mary Oliver. Yes, I know it is December and the poem is set on a sunny, summer day. Just stay with me here.
My favorite part of this poem (aside from that powerful last sentence!) is the way the writer is so caught up in observing the finer movements of a grasshopper. All other details fall away because she is so immensely present in that moment. And we, as readers, are right there with her.
It’s a lesson I need to learn – how to be more mindful and present, and how to fret less about yesterday or what has yet to cross my path. Without further adieu…
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 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?