Why I Wake Early

It's my day off.  I stayed up till midnight watching a movie, knowing I could sleep in.  Wouldn't you know it?  At 5:30am I was wide awake. I didn't know there was a  -1.1 tide at 6:35am. Clamming is closed so on a morning when there could have been thousands of people frantically digging their limit it was just me and that bald eagle perched on the sand, daring the crows to try and take his breakfast. In the second it took me to scan the beach to the north, he was gone.  Had he really been there?  I bet I could have found the footprints.

I did marvel at the intricate sand snail trails turning the beach into a huge etch-a-sketch. I stomped around and smiled at the clam shows and wished them well. I picked up and kissed the most enormous slug I've ever seen. I found more sand dollars than I could carry.  I watched the rising sun light up the sea gooseberry blobs like iridescent glass. Most importantly, I thanked the Universe for not letting me sleep in.

Mary Oliver published a book of poems titled 'Why I Wake Early'.  Here is my favorite poem from that collection:

The Pinewoods

Just before dawn 

three deer 

came walking 

down the hill

as if the moment were nothing different

from eternity --

as lightly as that

they nibbled

the leaves,

they drank

from the pond,

their pretty mouths

sucking the loose silver,

their heavy eyes

shining.

Listen,

I did not really see them.

I came later, and saw their tracks

on the empty sand.

But I don't believe

only to the edge

of what my eyes actually see

in the kindness of the morning,

do you?

And my life,

which is my body surely,

is also something more --

isn't yours?

I suppose the deer waited 

to see the sun lift itself up,

filling the hills with light and shadows --

then they went leaping

back into the rough, uncharted pinewoods

where I have lived so much of my life,

where everythig is so quick and uncertain,

so glancing, so improbable, so real.