“Always be on the lookout for the presence if wonder.” E.B.WHITE
PHOTO: E.B. White consulting with his beloved dachshund Minnie, 1940s.
Archives for posts with tag: wonder
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?
…From New and Selected Poems (Beacon Press, 1992) © 1992, Mary Oliver, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Illustration: “Grasshopper,” interchangeable jewelry available for just $2.37 from obrose.com.
From HARD LANDING
by Rick Smith
The morning air bursts
with bird conversation
dialogue and incantation
debate and invitation.
Wren is drunk with company
and sudden purpose.
Next door,
in a cottonwood,
a mockingbird
becomes
a cell phone
ringing in the wild.
* * * * *
ghost wren
dreaming on a cable
posed
and still
like a shadow
about to dart
into a windless space
flesh and fiber
anticipating
the tension of wound steel
a cello in the night
an ordinary cello
still
in a windless room
* * * * *
Something dangerous,
a red-tailed hawk
and coming fast,
like wind
off Lake Michigan.
Wren, lost in dreams,
freezes, off-guard.
The hawk
snaps a yard rat
off a clothesline
not ten feet away.
Motionlessness
disguises anxiety.
Wren breaks out
of dream time,
arguing with unruly ghosts
* * * * *
A grey wren
foolish enough
to believe in Indian summer
stares into a black
and gritty wind
shakes with every gust,
imagines a subtle hand
on a dimmer switch
in a night
slow descending.
When wren is absent
where does she go?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rick Smith began writing under the guidance of Michael Casey at Solebury School in Pennsylvania. Close family friendships and Carl Sandburg and Lenore Marshall also made a lasting impact on Rick’s life choices. He went on to study with Anthony Hecht at Bard College, George Starbuck, Marvin Bell and Frank Polite at the University of Iowa, and Sam Eisenstein at Los Angeles City College. His poems are published widely in anthologies and magazines such as New Letter, Onthebus, Blueline, Hanging Loose, Pinyon, Eclipse, Paper Street, Lummox, Rattle, Rhino and Main Street Rag. His book of poetry, Hard Landing, (Lummox Press, 2010), is a lyrical tribute to the mystical “wren,” a character with characteristics not unlike the human spirit.
Purchase HARD LANDING from Lummox Press or at Amazon.com.
Listen to Rick Smith read “Little King” from the collection at youtube.
