Winter Reflection on “The Summer Day”

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

These last lines from Mary Oliver’s poem has almost passed into the realm of the “immortal quote”. By which I mean the context and intent that surrounded the words fade into the background as the noise of social media and marketing gurus bend them for their own ends.

It’s probably one of the most beautiful last lines in poetry.

But most people who share this barely know the title of the poem is The Summer Day. And of all the permutations for the title, the poet didn’t use A Summer Day, but The Summer Day.

For me this is because the poem talks about summer not just as a season, but a stage in life. It talks of the grasshopper, a creature of the summer. The poem describes details from a brief moment observing the grasshopper, which is characterized in fables as the carefree, fun-loving creature who didn’t gather food and prepare for the coming winter. The grasshopper as a cautionary tale.

The poem takes this story about the grasshopper, and wonders if this idleness were not a blessedness, a way to live and honor the season properly; if life was supposed to be about feeling joy and freedom, anyway, and not toil, knowing that we have very limited seasons to live through

Through that reflection, that glimpse of a moment in a grasshopper’s life, the poet asks: “Knowing all of this now, what would you do?”

She asks this not for one definitive answer. She asks this as a mystery that we take up everyday and try to figure out, piece by piece, anyway.

Maybe today, my life is about rest and dormancy, absorbing, learning, building momentum. Maybe tomorrow my life will be about connecting and community. Whatever it is, wherever we are in our season, our one wild and precious life continues. Each day we wake up, it’s another chance to answer the question again and again.