Why I Wake Early

by Mary Oliver

I look; morning to night I am never done with looking. Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around as though with your arms open. And thinking: maybe something will come, some shining coil of wind, or a few leaves from any old tree— they are all in this too. And now I will tell you the truth. Everything in the world comes. At least, closer. And, cordially.

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.

I live in the open mindedness of not knowing enough about anything.

It is what I was born for— to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world—