Why I Wake Early

by Mary Oliver

and there was once, oh wonderful, a new horse in the pasture, a tall, slim being—a neighbor was keeping her there— and she put her face against my face, put her muzzle, her nostrils, soft as violets, against my mouth and my nose, and breathed me, to see who I was, a long quiet minute—minutes— then she stamped feet and whisked tail and danced deliciously into the grass away, and came back. She was saying, so plainly, that I was good, or good enough. Such a fine time I had teaching in Indiana.

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.

Mindful Every day I see or I hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. It is what I was born for— to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world— to instruct myself over and over in joy, and acclamation. Nor am I talking about the exceptional, the fearful, the dreadful, the very extravagant— but of the ordinary, the common, the very drab, the daily presentations. Oh, good scholar, I say to myself, how can you help but grow wise with such teachings as these— the untrimmable light of the world, the ocean’s shine, the prayers that are made out of grass?