Mary Oliver

       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 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?

John Updike '62

        Earthworm

 

We pattern our Heaven

on bright butterflies,

but it must be that even

in earth Heaven lies.

 

The worm we uproot

in turning a spade

returns, careful brute,

to the peace he has made.

 

God blesses him; he

gives praise with his toil,

lends comfort to me,

and aerates the soil.