Wild Life with Mary Oliver
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
~ Mary Oliver (“The summer day”)
Wild Life with Mary Oliver
Will you spring up from your pillow in the morning, heart racing, mind wild with questions and dreams? Will you sing softly then louder – to your spouse, your child, your dog, your view – an extemporaneous anthem of wants and wills and when’s and why’s?
Will you step into a steaming shower and listen to the raindrops and streams and oceans as you suds yesterday from your skin and hair? Or will you stride past the shower, the bathtub, the sink and dance directly to the lake? Will you dive in and swim until the shore calls you home again.
Will you pluck swollen raspberries from the brambles, grapes from the vines that wind through the fence around the garden, an apple from the gnarled tree in the first meadow?
And then, rested and clean and sated, how will you live this wild and precious morning?
Good luck! (And thank you, Mary Oliver.)
Mary Oliver Resources
- Mary Oliver’s “The summer day” (excerpt above) appears in New and Selected Poems
1992
- Mary Oliver’s books, books, books
(Amazon)
- Mary Oliver’s Beacon Press website
- Comprehensive online biography of Mary Oliver (Poetry Foundation)
- A people-powered perspective (Wikipedia)
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