The Poem Continues

It was my freshman college English class. We were asked to write down our favorite poet, then to share it out loud. I had a pretty limited bank of known poets to draw from. But I had a book of Robert Frost poetry from high school and always liked the poem Blueberries. When it came to me, I said, “Robert Frost.” There are few times in my life I can remember feeling so judged. Robert Frost is apparently pedestrian and not cool. Prior to college I’d never read a Jane Austen novel. Wuthering Heights was the only Brontë book I’d read, and only because I was a Kate Bush fan. I made for an unlikely English major.

I’ve come a long way but not long enough, I suppose, because despite myself, I love the kind of Mary Oliver poetry my freshman English professor might have rolled his eyes at.

One of her most quoted passages is from The Summer Day:

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

But no one says much about the two lines preceding lines:

Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

For months after being diagnosed I sat with the question, “Can I make peace with the fact that this might be all I get?”

The work when facing the fear of death is acceptance. Acceptance requires undoing, unplanning, unlearning. If you haven’t achieved it yet, you’re probably not going to. And there’s going to be a lot you miss out on. But you were here, in the meantime.
Was it enough? I asked myself, realizing it's not a question. It's a statement—it was enough. What else should I have done? Everything dies at last, and too soon.

The end.

But no, the poem continues…

Clean scans. This precious life is back on the table. The pressure is on to do something worthy of a second chance at life.

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

But I have learned that very little of this one wild and precious life is the result of my own planning. The question, I have learned, is not for me to answer, it’s for me to ask: “What is it you plan to do with my one wild and precious life?”

All these years later I return to Robert Frost’s Blueberries:

“Who cares what they say? It’s a nice way to live,
Just taking what Nature is willing to give,
Not forcing her hand with harrow and plow.”