more of Katie's bookmarks

Katie had a habbit of tearing the edges and corners off her school papers to make thin bookmarks that she tucked deeply into the binding of books. The next poem she marked was by Mary Oliver:

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 flug 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 kneal down into 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?

Two more poems are marked with her slender torn bookmarks, and maybe sometime I'll type them here as well. But the important thing was finding this small connection with Katie. She may have been choosing poems for an assignment for Mr. Craig, or she may have been marking poems she enjoyed. But it's these little connections with her that are so important now; they're all I have left.