A wish for you this summer

...It’s from my heart.

The Summer Day

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?

Isn’t this the perfect question to ask as you break from the halls of school?

Not because you need to be outside of your work to live the good life, but because we all need seasons.

We all need to be reunited with the sun on our face, with nature, with idleness.

It’s in the open space that new ideas and energys are planted and take root.

It’s in the wandering that the structure later becomes clear.

It’s in the time away that longing for a return starts to take hold in our heart.

Happy summer, my friend.

My wish for you is that you enjoy this wild and precious life.

Love,

Maggie