Mary Oliver, våtmarkspatrullerare

The Summer Day

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?

Ur New and selected Poems av Mary Oliver 1992

Ibland kan det vara lönt att vakna tidigt. Idag fick jag med en god stund Naturmorgon i P1 innan det var dags för Lundströms bokradio.  Döm om min förvåning när Mats Ottosson, programledare för Naturmorgon, brister uti en entusiastisk hyllning av en mycket känd amerikansk poet,  som inte finns översatt till svenska. Mary Oliver hette hon. Hon talar om vår plats "i alltings stora familj". Mary Oliver talar om vikten av uppmärksamhet i naturen. Hon promenerade sakta utan bestämt mål och hon hade alltid en anteckningsbok med sig. En gång fann hon sig utan penna i skogen vilket gjorde att hon gömde blyertspennor runt om i träden för att aldrig hamna i den situationen igen. Maxine Kumin kallade henne en våtmarkspatrullerare. Thoreau, som var en av Olivers förebilder, kallades en snöstormsinspektör.
Alex Luppens - Dale på Book Riot skriver så här:  "Much of Mary Oliver’s poetry has to do with walks she has taken in the woods, but there is always something else underneath—the idea that it is important to look at the world we live in to get an idea of who we are as humans within an ecosystem. Nature is central to Oliver’s idea of God."  Mary Oliver dog i januari 2019, 83 år gammal.