What are you going to do with your one wild and precious life? After holding this lovely phrase in my head for a year or two I found out who wrote it: Pulitzer prize winner Mary Oliver in her poem The Summer Day. Some mornings I woke up and there it was in my mind like a challenge.
Mary Oliver
Here are some of my favorites of her wonderful words:
“Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”
― Mary Oliver
“To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go”
― Mary Oliver
Here’s another excerpt I relate to:
“Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable…
I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way … as you no doubt have yours.
Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit…motionless …until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost unhearable…”
Her most famous is perhaps WILD GEESE (excerpted):
“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
For more go to: http://peacefulrivers.homestead.com/maryoliver.html#anchor_14792
Do you have a favorite poet, poem – or just a line that sticks in your head?
A Place in the World 
Such lovely words. Thanks for sharing them.
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I’m honored to have you stop by and comment Damyanti
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When he retired 20 years ago, my boss gave me a copy of mary Oliver’s New and Selected Poems. It was a revelation to me. Your post made me pull it out of the shelves and it is bristling with post-it notes.
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Me too.
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Such lovely words, so important, so beautiful. Here’s one of my favorites, by David Wagoner:
Lost
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here, And you must treat it as a powerful stranger, Must ask permission to know it and be known. The forest breathes. Listen. It answers, I have made this place around you. If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here. No two trees are the same to Raven. No two branches are the same to Wren. If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you, You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows Where you are. You must let it find you.
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OH I like it too! Thanks for stopping by.
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