I recently looked up the rest of the Mary Oliver poem that ends in "tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" because that was the only part I had ever heard, and it turns out the rest of The Summer Day is about going for a walk and lying about in the grass. That's what she planned to do with her one wild and precious life. I feel like it gets misapplied a lot.
As the weather grows cooler, I've been thinking about foraging, as a concept. I am a terrible gardener. Even as a child I loathed getting up early and tramping through the dewy grass to the dusty garden to water and pull weeds. As an adult, I stumbled onto the one plant that likes the climate of my front windows but claim no personal credit for their flourishing. If we ever move I may have to leave them here, to ensure their survival. There's also a pot of mint by my front step that survives on rain water or when one of the kids points out that it's a bit crunchy. Plants don't knock on your window and shout at you like birds do when their feeder is empty. I am grateful that others are gifted (or determined) in that area and I happily give them my money. Bring on the Saturday morning farmers markets, please and thank you.
But I do love walking through a forest or along a beach, picking up tiny treasures. Wending my way through market stalls to find the old man who grows the biggest strawberries, or the woman who brings my favorite flowers. Using what I find lying around my home in new decorative ways, or for small repairs. As a teenaged library volunteer, I was known as the person who could make recalcitrant signs stay in place with bent paperclips and scotch tape, invisibly placed, like a bookish MacGyver.
When I constantly look for things that are broken or systems that could function more efficiently, then I miss the things that are already beautiful and functional. So this Libra season, I'm trying to see the beauty that's already there. To walk along slowly enough to catch the glint of something I would have otherwise overlooked. To spend my one wild and precious life enjoying what is, rather than mourning what is not.
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