This Grasshopper
the summer day, the library, attention
Sometimes it’s a gaze that undoes the body.
Sometimes it’s a poem that undoes the heart.
Sometimes less is more.
The smallest, most concise part of something is all you need to understand what’s happening.
Today, I share a poem that has resurfaced for me many times this past month. I love this poem; everybody loves this poem. It captures significant questions with the fewest words.
When something repeats, as an experience, I pay attention.
The Summer Day by 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.1
I …