Why I Wake Early

by Mary Oliver

Let us hope it will always be like this, each of us going on in our inexplicable ways building the universe.

It is possible, I suppose, that sometime we will learn everything there is to learn: what the world is, for example, and what it means. I think this as I am crossing from one field to another, in summer, and the mockingbird is mocking me, as one who either knows enough already or knows enough to be perfectly content not knowing.

But this: it is heaven itself to take what is given, to see what is plain; what the sun lights up willingly;

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.