Discovery

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"-- Mary Oliver

I found this quote on another blog (http://thommalyn.blogspot.com/) whose owner appears to like quotes as much as I do. I have never run across this one though and I just LOVE it!

In digging a little further I realize that it is not actually a quote, complete in itself, but the ending of a poem by Mary Oliver. I begin to read more of her poems and wonder how, as an English major, I was never introduced to this great poet?? As a girl who doesn't care for rhyming, I find a lot of similarities between our styles, though I'm certainly not pretending to be as talented or perceptive as she is. Her poems are so simple and free-flowing, but after reading them over a couple of times they reveal many complexities and wonderful insights into nature and life. Below is the complete poem the quote is pulled from... see what I mean?!

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 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?