Why I Wake Early

by Mary Oliver

Oh Lord, how shining and festive is your gift to us, if we only look, and see.

Don’t think I’m not afraid. There is such an unleashing of horror. Then I remember: death comes before the rolling away of the stone.

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.

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.

Wherever I am, the world comes after me. It offers me its busyness. It does not believe that I do not want it.