Mary Oliver’s “Why I Wake Early” has a lot to do with why I forged ahead with my Millay Song Against the Day. I do hope she’ll invite me, Sylvie and Marcel to hang in her neck of the woods. Oh, anything is possibile. Once everything is charged.

Yes, that’s the Mary Oliver who spent quite a bit of time living at Steepletop, the setting for my play. The glorious poet soul with the Edna St. Vincent Millay connection.

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

—————————————————————-s
Now… something by Stanley Kunitz should be read, perhaps:
The Portrait

My mother never forgave my father
for killing himself,
especially at such an awkward time
and in a public park,
that spring
when I was waiting to be born.
She locked his name
in her deepest cabinet
and would not let him out,
though I could hear him thumping.
When I came down from the attic
with the pastel portrait in my hand
of a long-lipped stranger
with a brave moustache
and deep brown level eyes,
she ripped it into shreds
without a single word
and slapped me hard.
In my sixty-fourth year
I can feel my cheek
still burning.