What To Do with Your One Wild and Precious Life?

Art by Rebecca J. Hartman

Reading Mary Oliver’s poetry can seem like grazing.

She’ll give you 17 simple lines, more like prose than poetry, and just when you’re relaxed, she’ll smack you with a line you’ll never forget: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Once upon a time, I thought her question only for young people—before I realized that many young lives, like mine years ago, become crowded with chasing degrees, certifications, or jobs needed to move forward; everything feels like running a marathon. And then come partners or children whose security and happiness you carry like a heavy, treasured backpack. And sometimes there’s a second job…

When we are too busy running and working (being wild only occasionally as an escape), how are we to consider what to do with our precious, hallowed life?

No matter. Oliver provides an answer for us in “Sometimes”: “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” That we can start at any age. It’s never too late.

And if I were to die sooner rather than later, I would want to have noticed the lightness of the air last night at dusk, watching the delicate dragonfly on my porch, wondering how to save him from the dogs, should they jump onto the screen. The diaphanous creature calmly lit on my pants’ leg and hitched a ride outside before flying away to safety and freedom. I was truly paying attention and felt as if, for just a moment, we were sharing some kind of holy space.

And I was astonished, just as the twilight fell outside the fence onto the lake, when I saw the outline of my smallest dog eating the one Cherokee Purple tomato remaining on the vine, supposedly saved by me for dinner tomorrow.

And if I were to die later, rather than sooner, I hope to gather into my lap, like garden treasures into an apron, every dawn and every sunset remaining in this unwild and precious life. That is my goal. That is what I plan to do.