Why I Wake Early

by Mary Oliver

The old creek began to sing in my ears as it rolled along, like the hair of spring, and the young girl I used to be heard it also, as she came swinging into the woods, truant from everything as usual except the clear globe of the day, and its beautiful details.

or, maybe, it says nothing at all but just stands there with the patience of vegetables and saints until the whole earth has turned around and the silver moon becomes the golden sun—

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 sometimes I am that madcap person clapping my hands and singing; and sometimes I am that quiet person down on my knees.

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.

All things are inventions of holiness. Some more rascally than others.