Our One Wild and Precious Life

“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, from the poem, “The Summer Day”

Poetry found me during the ‘sturm und drang’ period of my teens, and then once again as an adult when I discovered its healing medicines. I particularly remember when this poem found me – well, maybe not the exact day or time, but that it was a particularly low and painful time in my life. Reading along, my mind painted an image much like the one above – a sunny, blue sky, summer day, to a field where tall grasses and wildflowers mingled with the sound of grasshoppers and buzzing bees…

…and then BOOM!! a question – THE question – that abrubtly ended my little reverie and sent my thoughts reeling.

I wasn’t expecting it.

That question…a BIG ONE…started an avalanche of others that refused to go away.

“What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” in the words of Mary Oliver, was asking me to explore and enlarge the possibilities.

“The poems we are drawn to are our guides. They ignite the journey, they point the way, they are the wind in our sails, they are the solvent to our defenses, and they give us a language for the ineffable homeland we are destined for.” ~ Kim Rosen, Saved by a Poem

Can a poem do that? YES!