summer day

Saturday, July 7, 2012














































12 from recent summer days & recipe from July Bon Appétite

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

It's my birthday today & my gift to me is this amazing poem

16 comments:

  1. Happy Birthday To You!
    And may your new year be Beauty-Full.
    xxxj

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  2. Happy Birthday Susan! And best wishes for a long and happy life.

    I had the great privilege of hearing Mary Oliver recite that poem at a reading in Boston about five years ago. You know, like you, she is a big dog lover, read for example "Little Dog's Rhapsody in the Night." She talked a lot about Percy, her bichon frise, and how that dog was tied to her partner, who had passed away recently, near the time of the reading. She has a whole series of Percy poems, they span several of her books. She also signed a couple of her books that I brought and one of hers from the local library.

    You may be the Mary Oliver of the Camera, attention as a form of prayer.

    In #4 Oliver is making me sleepy...again.

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  3. Happy Birthday, dear Susan! May another beautiful year follow on for you. x

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  4. Happy Birfday toooooo yooooou! Haaaappppy Birfday tooooo yooooou! Have a wonderful day.

    xoxo mlou

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  5. I LOVE that first photo, the sun flare is incredible! And I love Mary Oliver, too!

    Happy birthday, Susan! I hope you have a fantastic day filled with fantastic moments!

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  6. Hey Susan, I LOVE your sunflare cat photo. Very nice.
    Hope you have a wonderful day and a new year full of all things needed to fill your soul.
    Dalyce

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  7. Best wishes on your birthday and cheers to the year ahead!
    Kitty, USA

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  8. Wishing you a very Happy Birthday Susan and wonderful year ahead full of good things!

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  9. You don't really expect me to tell you what I'm going to do with this one life do you ? I'm still trying to figure out if there is just this ONE life or not. :-)

    Happy Birthday.

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  10. Sometimes
    I need only to stand
    wherever I am
    to be blessed.

    Mary Oliver

    Thank you all for the sweet b-day well wishes. Thank you John for telling me more about Mary Oliver (& for the thrilling compliment I certainly feel as if by looking and admiring, often reveling in & about - it feels like prayer).

    I'll admit most of my life I've felt like I didn't "get' poetry - seems so silly & strange now. Brief words strung together in such a way as to make you gasp a little. What's not to "get" - ahhhh age xo Susan

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  11. Happy, happy birthday, my sweet Canadian Angel of all things good!!!!
    I hope you have had a wonderfully sublime day!!! And I am wishing you yet another AMAZING YEAR in your incredibly AMAZING life! XOXOXO

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  12. Happiest Birthday my beautiful, talented friend...
    xo

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  13. Have a happy sunny birthday! Be very glad you are not in England where all the rain doth fall!

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  14. Happy Birthday, Susan... fellow Moonchild.

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  15. A wonderful day to have a birthday. I have mine on the 6th then wedding anniversary on the 7th. Such a happy week :) Hope you had a wonderful day.

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