A poem for my lady: Am I Not Among the Early Risers by Mary Oliver

Am I Not Among The Early Risers - Mary Oliver Am I not among the early risers and the long-distance walkers? Have I not stood, amazed, as I consider the perfection of the morning star above the peaks of the houses, and the crowns of the trees blue in the first light? Do I not see how the trees tremble, as though sheets of water flowed over them though it is only wind, that common thing, free to everyone, and everything? Have I not thought, for years, what it would be worthy to do, and then gone off, barefoot and with a silver pail, to gather blueberries, thus coming, as I think, upon a right answer? What will ambition do for me that the fox, appearing suddenly at the top of the field, her eyes sharp and confident as she stared into mine, has not already done? What countries, what visitations, what pomp would satisfy me as thoroughly as Blackwater Woods on a sun-filled morning, or, equally, in the rain? Here is an amazement–––once I was twenty years old and in every motion of my body there was a delicious ease, and in every motion of the green earth there was a hint of  paradise, and now I am sixty years old, and it is the same. Above the modest house and the palace–––the same darkness. Above the evil man and the just, the same stars. Above the child who will recover and the child who will not recover, the same energies roll forward, from one tragedy to the next and from one foolishness to the next. I bow down. Have I not loved as though the beloved could vanish at any moment, or become preoccupied, or whisper a name other that mine in the stretched curvatures of lust, or over the dinner table? Have I ever taken good fortune for granted? Have I not, every spring, befriended the swarm that pours forth? Have I not summoned the honey-man to come, to hurry, to bring with him the white and comfortable hive? And while I waited, have I not leaned close, to see everything? Have I not been stung as I watched their milling and gleaming, and stung hard? Have I not been ready always at the iron door, not knowing to what country it opens–––to death or to more life? Have I ever said that the day was too hot or too cold or the night too long and as black as oil anyway, or the morning, washed blue and emptied entirely of the second-rate, less than happiness as I stepped down from the porch and set out along the green paths of the world?