Praying Days

Someone passed on to me this poem by Mary Oliver, “I Happened to Be Standing.”  Perhaps you know it; I didn’t.  But it speaks to me these days as I watch birds and squirrels outside my study window and try to turn these odd days into a kind of extended retreat, soaking in and treasuring the miracles of nature popping up all around us.  We probably all need this kind of escape these days—an escape into a beautiful reality that surrounds us.

I don’t know where prayers go,

or what they do.

Do cats pray, while they sleep

half-asleep in the sun?

Does the opossum pray as it

crosses the street?

The sunflowers?  The old black oak

growing older every year?

I know I can walk through the world,

along the shore or under the trees,

with my mind filled with things

of little importance, in full

self-attendance.  A condition I can’t really

call being alive.

Is a prayer a gift, or a petition?

or does it matter?

The sunflowers blaze, maybe that’s their way.

Maybe the cats are sound asleep. Maybe not.

While I was thinking this I happened to be standing

just outside my door, with my notebook open,

which is the way I begin every morning.

Then a wren in the privet began to sing.

He was positively drenched in enthusiasm.

I don’t know why.  And yet, why not?

I won’t persuade you from whatever you believe

or whatever you don’t.  That’s your business.

But I thought of the wren’s singing,   what could this be

If it isn’t a prayer?

So I just listened, my pen in the air.