Why I Wake Early

Up before daybreak today, which is totally unlike me. Lost myself in a book and, as synchronicty would have it, rediscovered this poem by the American poet Mary Oliver. She always makes me feel good, no matter how 'miserable and crotchety' I can be (and often am) in the morning.

Here it is.



Why I Wake Early

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who made 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.


~ Mary Oliver