The author has identified this as an autobiographical. Thus, the speaker is the author, or at least a fictional persona. As if often the case with poems by Mary Oliver, things begin with questions. Three questions, to be specific. Since the speaker directs these questions to no one in particular it is often assumed that they are posed to the reader. The structural framework indicates it is more likely that they are contemplative queries addressed to herself. Who is the party responsible for creating earth? Who made swans and black bears? And, finally, who made the grasshopper? The subject of these questions narrows with each delivery until the final one has lost all bearing of its rhetorical nature as the speaker points out that this question applies to one specific grasshopper who has, at that moment, leapt from the grass and is eating sugar from her hand.
The speaker then describes with precision how this activity is performed by the grasshopper. The jaws of the insect do not move up and down as expected, but back and forth. The eyes of the grasshopper are very large and there is something about them that the speaker finds complicated. Identifying them as forearms, the creature’s leg not colored, but instead whitish in appearance. The speaker identifies the grasshopper in the feminine, describing how “she” cleans her face free of the sugar after eating. In an instant, her wings spread wide, and she is gone.
This leads the speaker to a confession. She asserts that she does not really know what a prayer is, but on the other hand she knows she is very good at paying close attention to things. For instance, she knows exactly how to fall down when playing in the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to do absolutely nothing productive and enjoy the simple pleasures of being unproductive, and how leisurely amble through fields.
And that is what she has been doing the whole day. At this point, more questions are raised and this time the framework does suggest they are being addressed directly to readers. In regard to that last admission, she queries the reader to ask what else should she have been doing all day rather than walking through fields.
This question seems to make the reader turn melancholic in the moment as she turns contemplative with a philosophical observation—once again posed as a question—that everything dies eventually and isn’t the eventually always too soon in coming. One last question is asked of readers: What do they intend to accomplish with the one single shot at mortality that is offered everyone?
