"Who Made The Grasshopper?"

Last night we danced Mary Oliver's "The Summer Day" , my line being "Who made the grasshopper"? When we all read our randomly chosen lines, it became a poem in itself. I had some "line envy" wishing I had picked one of the other wonderfully intriguing lines to dance, but mine came to me for a reason as always. As I danced I thought about the word WHO. I opened to the questions and the possibilities through my dance. I found I was reaching up with open arms a lot during the session, as if to question, and be an open vessel to what life brings to me, what can come if I am open. As the Zen saying goes, when the student is ready the teacher will appear.  The answer to the WHO, kept coming back to me as ME.  As the dance ended and we lay on the floor and as always, were treated to being ready the poem, in its entirety, in the order Mary Oliver intended~~~

"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?"

As I listened to the poem a smile came over my face and I felt peaceful and happy. I realized that I had truly been dancing the poem in it's entirety all night without even knowing it. I had known the poem deep down inside of me and the line "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" hangs on my refrigerator! I had been reaching, leaping, floating, flinging and spinning, with wing-like arms spread all night without realizing that I had embodied the poem. I rejoiced knowing that I am truly living this one wild precious life to the fullest. "I know how to pay attention", to the little things. To see the extraordinary in the ordinary. I am that grasshopper who is continually flinging herself out of the grass and embracing life!