WHERE PRAYERS GO 

Poem for Today - April 27, 2014

I HAPPEN TO BE STANDING

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 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 wouldn’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 b

be if it isn’t prayer?

So I just listened, my pen in the air.

© Mary Oliver, pages 3-4

A Thousand Mornings