“Summer time and the livin’ is easy….”
This is a beautiful song that my mother used to croon around my house when I was growing up.
It has a lovely sentiment but it’s only true if you create the space in your life to let ‘easy’ in. Pausing right now to notice the gentle energy of summer can create an opening to the quality of ‘easy’.
The poet, Mary Oliver, says it so well in her poem “The Summer Day”. I hope you enjoy listening to me read her poem.
‘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.
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?
Tell me how you are nourishing yourself this summer. Leave your comments so that everyone can benefit.
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