Monday, August 15, 2016
Jane and I were good friends about a decade ago and had both grown up in the Rothesay/Quispamsis area of New Brunswick but met in Halifax. However, it was our mutual love of poetry that really built the foundation of our wonderful friendship. I also spent many days on the beautiful beaches of Nova Scotia with Jane and I met her lovely children several times.
I was so saddened to read about the passing of this beautiful, caring, relevant woman and I am having difficulty making sense of this loss to the world. This poem is at least giving me some solace that she did live and she did have a wild and precious life……
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 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?
—Mary Oliver
