Mary Oliver didn’t know who would read her poem, how it might make them feel and what it might inspire them to do as a result of reading it.

The two women who were inspired wrote a piece of music to work with the poem. They didn’t know how the people who were at the concert that day would respond, or what it might inspire in them.

I’ve carried that day, that piano piece and this poem with me for over a year, and still I get goosebumps when I remember sitting in a beautiful music studio in the country, hearing it all for the first time.

A dream this morning while on a writing retreat by the beach brought it back to me and I gift it to you. I know not how you will respond and whether it inspires you to do something you would love.

Mary Oliver wrote because it was what she loved, my fellow students shone with the joy of their creation, and I feel full to write and share this with you. I invite you to carry the question with you, and to remember how you the world is calling for you to live your richest possible life..

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
Mary Oliver (1935-2019) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.