Pausing for Poetry

Sometimes I read a poem that is just so perfect. Just so cool. Just so amazingly simple, but profound. This is one of those that fits the summer season. I'm dedicating this poem to my son, Sam. It's his 35th birthday today. He's always known that his life is wild and precious!

The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan and the grasshopper?
Who made the black bear?
The grasshopper, I mean--the one who has flung her self 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 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?