Welcome Summer?

Young Great Horned Owl near Bennington Lake in Walla Walla waits for its parents to return with a meal

© Diane B. Reed

Today is the first day of summer, though it seems as though spring has barely established itself. Still, the birds and animals have been busy raising families despite the cold and rainy spring. It is a wonderful thing to watch the earth and its creatures renew themselves. Here's a thoughtful poem by Mary Oliver that evokes our transition from spring to summer and asks us to think about what we're going to do with our own lives. 

Great Blue Heron  © Diane B. Reed

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?