A Summer Day BY MARY OLIVER 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? (1992)
This week, we’re reading a
poem by the renowned American poet Mary Oliver.
Chances are you’ve heard the last couple of lines of this Mary Oliver
poem before: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild
and precious life?” They’re probably Oliver’s most quoted lines, and
they get a lot of use around this time of year – graduation time. They
are an enthusiastic reminder that life is precious, and we only have one
apiece—so make it count. But, I think when we hear those lines in the
context of the poem, they mean something quite different from the
sentiments on greeting cards for high school and college graduations.
The poem begins with a series of questions. “Who made the
world? / Who made the swan, and the black bear? / Who made the
grasshopper?” The poet does not go on to answer those questions, but
instead seems to get distracted—“This grasshopper, I mean.” She marvels
at a grasshopper, who has hopped into her hand to eat the sugar she is
holding. The poet is still and observant, noticing every detail. She
watches how the grasshopper’s jaws move back and forth instead of up and
down, and studies the “enormous and complicated eyes.” She looks at how
the grasshopper washes her face. Notice the surprising word choices that
come from direct observation of the natural world: the grasshopper has
“pale forearms” and wings that “snap” open, and her motion is described
as floating, not flying or jumping. This is a specific grasshopper, not
just a generic one! After the grasshopper “floats” away, the
poem makes another shift. The poet does not return to the questions she
asked at the beginning of the poem—“who made the grasshopper.” She
doesn’t need to, since she knows the answer: she knows that God made
everything. We can follow her thought process as she she turns
suddenly—but not surprisingly—to the subject of prayer. “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.” She says she doesn’t know what a prayer is, but
obviously, she knows how to pray. She knows “how to fall down / into the
grass”—how to be in the world—and “how to kneel down in the grass”—how
to be reverent in the world. She knows “how to be idle and blessed.” She
knows that simply to “pay attention” to all God has created is to pray.
At the end of the poem, she comes back to questions. “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?” The questions at the beginning of the poem pointed
towards God; the questions at the end point towards the poet—and the
reader. Should she be doing something else with her time? But the answer
is clearly no. Everything dies, “and too soon.” We have only this life,
this moment, to look around us. So when the poet asks, at the end of the
poem, “what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious
life,” she is not asking about where you’re going to college or your
career choices! Quite the reverse. Oliver is suggesting that if we can
just learn to be in the world, to marvel at the transient beauty of
created things, to be “idle and blessed,” that would be enough. Good
advice for a lifetime – or at least for a summer day.
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