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.