Why I Wake Early

by Mary Oliver

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.

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

had anyone a piano small enough I think the toad could learn to play something, a little Mozart maybe, inside the cool cellar of the sandy hill—