Why I Wake Early

by Mary Oliver

Fifteen minutes of music with nothing playing.

The Lover of Earth Cannot Help Herself

may float over me, shining in the air, falling in my hair, touching my face

ah, sweet-smelling, glossy and colorful world, I say,

So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe they sing. So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe the stars sing too, and the ants, and the peonies, and the warm stones, so happy to be where they are, on the beach, instead of being locked up in gold.

but delightfully, as if delight were the most serious thing you ever felt. The geese flew on.

Maybe I will, someday, somewhere. Maybe I won’t. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that, when I saw them, I saw them as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly.

Impossible to believe we need so much as the world wants us to buy. I have more clothes, lamps, dishes, paper clips than I could possibly use before I die. Oh, I would like to live in an empty house, with vines for walls, and a carpet of grass. No planks, no plastic, no fiberglass.

And I suppose sometime I will. Old and cold I will lie apart from all this buying and selling, with only the beautiful earth in my heart.

If you were there, it was all those things. If you can imagine it, it is all those things. Eat, drink, be happy. Accept the miracle. Accept, too, each spoken word spoken with love.

Accept the miracle. Accept, too, each spoken word spoken with love.

Wherever I am, the world comes after me. It offers me its busyness. It does not believe that I do not want it. Now I understand why the old poets of China went so far and high into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.

it will always be like this, each of us going on in our inexplicable ways building the universe.

And then the wind, not thinking of you, just passes by, touching the ant, the mosquito, the leaf, and you know what else! How blue is the sea, how blue is the sky, how blue and tiny and redeemable everything is, even you, even your eyes, even your imagination.