Mary Oliver’s line reads like a quiet imperative: pursue your visions with method and truth. "Steady hands" suggest disciplined commitment, while "honest eyes" ask for unflinching attention to what is real. This pairing echoes Oliver’s own poetics of attention—standing in meadows, kneeling by ponds—where careful observation becomes a gateway to meaning. Her poem "The Summer Day" (1990) culminates in the question of how we will spend our "one wild and precious life," urging us to choose with awareness. Likewise, "Wild Geese" (1986) calls us home to the truth of our nature. Together, they frame dreams not as escapism but as a vow to align aspiration with the world as it is, and as we are, then to proceed with care. [...]
