WHY I WAKE EARLY
By Mary Oliver
Beacon Press, 2004
Category: Poetry for adults
I am finally catching up to the rest of the kidlithosphere (the community of online admirers and reviewers of children’s books). Friday, in this otherworld, is poetry day. Who knew?
It just so happens, however, that I got a book of poetry for Christmas. And although I haven’t finished it yet (Poetry forces my reading to slow down, I linger and dwell in a way that I am never able to with prose), I can happily recommend it to budding poets and poetry enthusiasts everywhere. In fact, I recommend it to folks who don’t enjoy poetry, or who are a little afraid of it (this description fits me sometimes), or to anyone who admires wildlife and the natural world.
The title poem, WHY I WAKE EARLY, has become a morning ritual for me. It is an homage to the sun, a resolution to begin each day, with the sun’s help, “in happiness, in kindness”. These mornings—these cold and dark January mornings when I am up, alone, and working by lamplight—require a drop more imagination than most. But I aspire to begin in happiness and in kindness nonetheless.