By Julia Lima, TIWP Student

(Inspired by the Mary Oliver poem, The Summer Day, in which she asks, “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”)

you begin a moon
round, yellow,
and almost too full
beyond the trees
behind the world

you burn and melt
and drip into a lake
you are refreshed
between blue fish
and flat stones
and a small cloud

you rise up
and are smudged into the trees
you are anchored to the warm clay ground
the colors of the summer
more green than we can see

you fling yourself
into the body of a grasshopper
you are idle and blessed
and eat sugar from the hands of the earth

you fall back into the grass
through all the fields
through the entire day
through the prayers
through the enormous and complicated
and through the perfect center of the planet’s core

your wings spread
you kneel
your eyes are open
palms up
the earth hands you
your wild and precious life
it begins
it ends
it is what you will come back to
the earth