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

Summer is a time to make and fling and eat and move and gaze and lift and snap and open and float and fall and kneel and wash and bless and stroll and idle. Summer is about swans and black bears and grasshoppers. 

Summer is about prayer. I guess every season is about prayer, like every season is about paying attention and telling and planning. If our lives are prayers, then paying attention and telling and planning are prayers. 

“Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?” That makes it all wild and precious. That makes it all wide and open. That makes it all thirsty and hungry. There is beauty in finitude. The breath’s bow. The awesome exhale. The sacred blink. The holy noticing.