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

You’ve probably seen this quote around. It has become a kind of rallying cry, for on its own it leaves the reader zealous: Seize the day, it seems to say. Get up and go! But to take it from its place, at the end of Mary Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day,” is to alter its meaning. In context, it is decidedly against ambition. The poem describes a day alone in nature. The speaker, described as “idle and blessed,” observes a grasshopper, kneels, strolls, and simply pays attention. “Tell me,” she asks, “what else should I have done? / Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?” Perhaps the key to understanding the poem is in reading the phrase “what is it you plan to do” as ironic. Life, Oliver suggests, is inherently “wild and precious.” Our job is simply to pause, and notice it is so.