Welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Before I get to today's poem, which is by Mary Oliver, I wanted to let you know that we are going to add a little bit of an extension to our poetry memorization contest.

So we had said the 15th, but we're going to say the 17th. So today is Monday, June 10th, and we'll make it Monday,

June 17th when submissions have to be. And that gives everyone the weekend. It just seemed like,

you know, maybe some kids could use the extra weekend to memorize and then get their recitations

up. So again, extension for our poetry memorization contest for this summer

is to have your poem and your recitation posted by Monday, June 17th. And remember the hashtag for that

is hashtag TDP contest. All right, you've heard from Mary Oliver many times on this podcast.

She passed away earlier this spring, earlier this year.

And the poem that I'm going to read today is called Summer Poem.

Seems appropriate.

Leaving the house, I went out to see the frog, for example, in her shining green skin,

and her eggs, like a slippery veil, and her eyes with their golden rims,

and the pond with its risen lilies, and its warmed shores dotted with pink flowers,

and the long, windless afternoon,

and the white heron, like a dropped cloud,

taking one slow step, then standing a while,

then taking another, writing her own soft-footed poem through the still waters.

Summer poem is made up of 13 two-line stanzas.

And the two-line stanzas is something I'm kind of interested in, kind of fascinated by.

In his book, A Little Book on Form and Exploration to the Formal Imagination of Poetry,

Robert Haas, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his own poetry,

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