Perhaps this might be, as American author Joan Didion phrases it, a “bankrupt morning” where you wake up, devoid of inspiration for your creative projects.

Learn more about Mary Oliver and see her complete bibliography. Mary Oliver and Percy. (Photo 2005 by Rachel Giese Brown.)

In honor of National Poetry Month, I’ve got some inspiration in a very short recommended read from the poet Mary Oliver. In her poem The Summer Day, she mediates on creation and attention, and in so doing, urges us to seize possibility with a beautifully simple question:

Tell me, what is it that you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
—The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

Listen to Mary Oliver read The Summer Day:

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