No reading today. I suspect this is the way it will be until June. Things are busier than I like them to be, and my focus is on much less fun stuff. I promise, I’ll come back to recommendations once everything has died down.
I’ll leave you with a bit of a poem instead of a recommended story today. I think this is possibly the most often quoted of Mary Oliver’s poems, but there’s good reason for it.
from The Summer Day
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 (reprinted in The Truro Bear and Other Adventures: Poems and Essays. Beacon Press, 2008.)
If you like this, go here to listen to her read the entire poem (and others).