Summer. It’s the season of simplicity and of all things childhood, of bare feet and long days. And weddings too – for you and for us. We may work like busy little bees this time of year but summer is, just as well, still simple. It is all things childhood, and bare feet and long days. One of my favorite odes, if you will, to the season that steals all of our hearts is Mary Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day.” It’s a toast, poem, manifesto, prayer, ode – whatever you call it – to the simple act of attention that seems to surface more for each of us this time of year.
“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?”
Here’s to being idle and blessed, to strolling through the fields of our wild and precious lives!
much love and gratitude,
the whole crew over here at JWP
Ah, yes….here’s to summer: you captured it perfectly!!