Why I Wake Early

by Mary Oliver

Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around as though with your arms open.

accept- ing the gift of their lives to assist mine.

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— as the lily absolutely knew it would, which is itself, isn’t it, the perfect prayer?

Oh Lord, how shining and festive is your gift to us, if we only look, and see.

the broken cupboard of the clam,

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.

I held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us

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.

If you can imagine it, it is all those things. Eat, drink, be happy. Accept the miracle.

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

When this happened it was about the middle of summer, which also has its purposes and only so many precious hours. How quietly, and not with any assignment from us, or even a small hint of understanding, everything that needs to be done is done.

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.