So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

So....it's technically spring (though you'd never know it from the Boston weather) which means that summer isn't far off! At least, that's what I'm telling myself to get through the week of rain forecasted for the East Coast. April is indeed the cruelest month, but I'll one-up Eliot and say that April, quite frankly, is an asshole.

Today's poem is posted in anticipation of the summer months, during which I hope to spend many afternoons sunbathing and drinking sangria on a roof deck. Anyone got a roof deck I can borrow?

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?