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.

When the Sufi poet whirled, was he looking outward, to the mountains so solidly there in a white-capped ring, or was he looking to the center of everything: the seed, the egg, the idea that was also there, beautiful as a thumb curved and touching the finger, tenderly, little love-ring, as he whirled, oh jug of breath, in the garden of dust?

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.

Loving the earth, seeing what has been done to it, I grow sharp, I grow cold.

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.

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.

How blue is the sea, how blue is the sky, how blue and tiny and redeemable everything is, even you, even your eyes, even your imagination.