Here are a few of the good things I've noticed in the last few days.
| I'm finding even more intriguing textures everywhere I look. |
| Everywhere. |
| Inside |
| and outside. |
| New transplants seem happy, |
| and I'm happy to let volunteers bloom wherever they'd like this year, too. |
| A little bit of old-fashioned color on the outside windowsill brightens any day. |
I came across this wonderful Mary Oliver poem again today.
Like all of her poems, it gets right to the heart of what's important. . .
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
And here's Mary Oliver reading the poem herself. I'm not a fan of much poetry, but I adore Mary Oliver, and she reads her own poetry better than anyone.
“Life becomes precious and more special to us
when we look for the little everyday miracles
and get excited about the privileges
of simply being human.”