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.

Clouds All afternoon, Sir, your ambassadors have been turning into lakes and rivers. At first they were just clouds, like any other. Then they swelled and swirled; then they hung very still; then they broke open. This is, I suppose, just one of the common miracles, a transformation, not a vision, not an answer, not a proof, but I put it there, close against my heart, where the need is, and it serves the purpose. I go on, soaked through, my hair slicked back; like corn, or wheat, shining and useful.

What Was Once the Largest Shopping Center in Northern Ohio Was Built Where There Had Been a Pond I Used to Visit Every Summer Afternoon Loving the earth, seeing what has been done to it, I grow sharp, I grow cold. Where will the trilliums go, and the coltsfoot? Where will the pond lilies go to continue living their simple, penniless lives, lifting their faces of gold? 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 Why wonder about the loaves and the fishes? If you say the right words, the wine expands. If you say them with love and the felt ferocity of that love and the felt necessity of that love, the fish explode into many. Imagine him, speaking, and don’t worry about what is reality, or what is plain, or what is mysterious. 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.

Bear It’s not my track, I say, seeing the ball of the foot and the wide heel and the naily, untrimmed toes. And I say again, for emphasis, to no one but myself, since no one is with me. This is not my track, and this is an extremely large foot, I wonder how large a body must be to make such a track, I am beginning to make bad jokes. I have read probably a hundred narratives where someone saw just what I am seeing. Various things happened next. A fairly long list, I won’t go into it. But not one of them told what happened next—I mean, before whatever happens— how the distances light up, how the clouds are the most lovely shapes you have ever seen, how the wild flowers at your feet begin distilling a fragrance different, and sweeter than any you ever stood upon before—how every leaf on the whole mountain is aflutter.

“Just a minute,” said a voice … “Just a minute,” said a voice in the weeds. So I stood still in the day’s exquisite early morning light and so I didn’t crush with my great feet any small or unusual thing just happening to pass by where I was passing by on my way to the blueberry fields, and maybe it was the toad and maybe it was the June beetle and maybe it was the pink and tender worm who does his work without limbs or eyes and does it well or maybe it was the walking stick, still frail and walking humbly by, looking for a tree, or maybe, like Blake’s wondrous meeting, it was the elves, carrying one of their own on a rose-petal coffin away, away into the deep grasses. After awhile the quaintest voice said, “Thank you.” And then there was silence. For the rest, I would keep you wondering.

This Morning I Watched the Deer This morning I watched the deer with beautiful lips touching the tips of the cranberries, setting their hooves down in the dampness carelessly, isn’t it after all the carpet of their house, their home, whose roof is the sky? Why, then, was I suddenly miserable? Well, this is nothing much. This is the heaviness of the body watching the swallows gliding just under that roof. This is the wish that the deer would not lift their heads and leap away, leaving me there alone. This is the wish to touch their faces, their brown wrists— to sing some sparkling poem into the folds of their ears, then walk with them, over the hills and over the hills and into the impossible trees.

The Old Poets of China 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.

The Best I Could Do In the black-shadowed pines on the shore beyond the pond owl was sitting. When he saw me his eyes flared like matches and he did his big, loose hunch, stirring up the bronze of his shoulders, and hissed, and seemed about to fly away. Who knows why he didn’t but instead clamped his orange feet down on the black limb and stared into my face, though not my eyes— had I been mouse or squirrel I would have cried for my life. And thus we stayed for a long time. I would have given a great deal to have invoked some connection, eye to eye, to know what he thought of me here in the world—his world— his gauzy and furzy acres, sour, weedy, lush, mortal. 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.

The Wren from Carolina Just now the wren from Carolina buzzed through the neighbor’s hedge a line of grace notes I couldn’t even write down much less sing. Now he lifts his chestnut colored throat and delivers such a cantering praise— for what? For the early morning, the taste of the spider, for his small cup of life that he drinks from every day, knowing it will refill. All things are inventions of holiness. Some more rascally than others. I’m on that list too, though I don’t know exactly where. But, every morning, there’s my own cup of gladness, and there’s that wren in the hedge, above me, with his blazing song.

Some Things, Say the Wise Ones Some things, say the wise ones who know everything, are not living. I say, you live your life your way and leave me alone. I have talked with the faint clouds in the sky when they are afraid of being left behind; I have said, Hurry, hurry! and they have said: Thank you, we are hurrying. About cows, and starfish, and roses, there is no argument. They die, after all. But water is a question, so many living things in it, but what is it, itself, living or not? Oh, gleaming generosity, how can they write you out? As I think this I am sitting on the sand beside the harbor. I am holding in my hand small pieces of granite, pyrite, schist. Each one, just now, so thoroughly asleep.

Song of the Builders On a summer morning I sat down on a hillside to think about God— a worthy pastime. Near me, I saw a single cricket; it was moving the grains of the hillside this way and that way. How great was its energy, how humble its effort. Let us hope it will always be like this, each of us going on in our inexplicable ways building the universe.

Goldenrod, Late Fall This morning the goldenrod are all wearing their golden shirts fresh from heaven’s soft wash in the chill night. So it must be a celebration. And here comes the wind, so many swinging wings! Has he been invited, or is he the intruder? Invited, whisper the golden pebbles of the weeds, as they begin to fall over the ground. Well, you would think the little murmurs of the broken blossoms would have said otherwise, but no. So I sit down among them to think about it while all around me the crumbling goes on. The weeds let down their seedy faces cheerfully, which is the part I like best, and certainly it is as good as a book for learning from. You would think they were just going for a small sleep. You would think they couldn’t wait, it was going to be that snug and even, as all their lives were, full of excitation. You would think it was a voyage just beginning, and no darkness anywhere, but tinged with all necessary instruction, and light, and all were shriven, as all the round world is, and so it wasn’t anything but easy to fall, to whisper Good Night.