Why I Wake Early

by Mary Oliver

Why I Wake Early Hello, sun in my face. Hello, you who make the morning and spread it over the fields and into the faces of the tulips and the nodding morning glories, and into the windows of, even, the miserable and the crotchety— best preacher that ever was, dear star, that just happens to be where you are in the universe to keep us from ever-darkness, to ease us with warm touching, to hold us in the great hands of light— good morning, good morning, good morning. Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.

I believe I will never quite know. Though I play at the edges of knowing, truly I know our part is not knowing, but looking, and touching, and loving, which is the way I walked on, softly, through the pale-pink morning light.

There are things you can’t reach. But you can reach out to them, and all day long. The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God. And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.

Trout Lilies

so I shut my eyes. And let the darkness come in and roll me back. The old creek began to sing in my ears as it rolled along, like the hair of spring, and the young girl I used to be heard it also,

If she spoke to them, I don’t remember what she said, and if they kindly answered, it’s a gift that can’t be broken by giving it away. All I know is, there was a light that lingered, for hours, under her eyelids—that made a difference when she went back to a difficult house, at the end of the day.

She was saying, so plainly, that I was good, or good enough.

The Snow Cricket

and went back over the lawn, to where the lilies were standing on their calm, cob feet, each in the ease of a single, waxy body breathing contentedly in the chill night air; and I swear I pitied them, as I looked down into the theater of their perfect faces— that frozen, bottomless glare.

How Everything Adores Being Alive

Look and See

This morning, at waterside, a sparrow flew to a water rock and landed, by error, on the back of an eider duck; lightly it fluttered off, amused. The duck, too, was not provoked, but, you might say, was laughing.

This World

I would like to write a poem about the world that has in it nothing fancy. But it seems impossible. Whatever the subject, the morning sun glimmers it.

So I tried with my eyes shut, but of course the birds were singing. And the aspen trees were shaking the sweetest music out of their leaves. And that was followed by, guess what, a momentous and beautiful silence as comes to all of us, in little earfuls, if we’re not too hurried to hear it.

So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe they sing.

Snow Geese

Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last! What a task to ask of anything, or anyone, yet it is ours, and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.

held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us as with a match which is lit, and bright, but does not hurt in the common way, but delightfully, as if delight were the most serious thing you ever felt.

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.

Logos

If you were there, it was all those things. If you can imagine it, it is all those things.

this way and that way through the trees and under the trees. I live in the open mindedness of not knowing enough about anything.

The Best I Could Do

But except for the hiss, he did not make the least sound, simply stared as though if he wanted to he could lift me and carry me away— one orange knife for each shoulder, and I, aloft in the air, under his great wings, shouting praise, praise, praise as I cried for my life.

Mindful

Every day I see or I hear something that more or less kills me with delight,

Nor am I talking about the exceptional, the fearful, the dreadful, the very extravagant— but of the ordinary, the common, the very drab,

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

Daisies

I think this as I am crossing from one field to another, in summer, and the mockingbird is mocking me, as one who either knows enough already or knows enough to be perfectly content not knowing.

I think this as I reach down, not to pick but merely to touch— the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the daisies for the field.

One

and there you are, your own darling face, your own eyes. 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.

The Pinewoods

And my life, which is my body surely, is also something more— isn’t yours?