Mary Oliver: What Will You Do with Your One Wild and Precious Life?

 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?

—Mary Oliver

 

This is such a lovely yet haunting poem. Mary Oliver found inspiration in the everyday thing. She was a wonderful poet. She inspired us, the reader, to make sense of, to appreciate our surroundings or to at least try.

The saddest line in this poem is: "Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?" As we age "too soon" slips up quickly; but what about those who die so very young? One never knows when the time will come for us to leave but the time will come and for many it is just way too soon. Sometimes death comes so soon that the person has barely begun to live... yet alone decide what to do with the one wild and precious life. 

Having written the paragraph above, I think the children who died too soon these young souls played in the grass, looked at bugs, had fun on playgrounds with their friends, and loved their families. That is all they should have done. I heard some of the dreams held by these children and that is part of what they should have done. 

I am grateful for these young lives and immensely sorrowful that they left too soon. The question remains for us, "What will you do with your one wild and precious life?"