The Summer Day and a Winter Evening

I was sitting in a Kensington Market cafe today when the woman at the table next to mine turned to me to ask if I knew Mary Oliver, and when I said she was one of my favourite writers, the stranger said the poet had died today. 

Just two nights ago at book club someone quoted the last two lines of one of my favourite poems of hers, 'Tell me, what is it you plan to do /with your one wild and precious life?" People often use the quote to provide inspiration to climb mountains or cross a sea. While there is nothing wrong with grand ambition, the poem is quite the opposite of that, and more about enjoying our all too brief time on earth. It's about a woman lost in contemplation of a grasshopper. So I emailed the book club the poem at the end of the night so they could read the whole, beautiful thing.

When the stranger told me Mary Oliver had died, my first impulse was to go directly to The Summer Day and read it aloud. I am not a crier, but tears started to run down my face. "Tell me, what else should I have done? / Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?"

I took a moment to check out some other works, and the title 'Owls and Other Fantasies' jumped out at me as one I have to read.  Then I walked over to Spadina Ave, one of the busiest streets in the busiest cities, and saw a huge bird fly into a tall tree. I could hardly believe my eyes when I recognized a Great Horned Owl. I was shouting and pointing so everyone waiting for the streetcar could see, but everyone was avoiding making any eye contact. Finally one person looked at me - did I tug on their sleeve? He stopped and looked and saw, and we both shared the wonder. A small miracle. I think I will remember that moment for a very long time.

I was first introduced to the poem The Summer Day in 2010 by Ian Brown in a piece called Poetry and Other Subversive Acts and have loved it ever since. 

Here it is again:

The Summer Day

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?

—Mary Oliver