I Happened to be Standing

It’s been unseasonably cool, cloudy, and rainy during my post-graduation trip to North Carolina. This morning, I sighed in disappointment when I woke to the sound of more rain on the roof of my twin sister’s house. It was still raining when we sat down to breakfast a few hours later. Soon, though, the chorus of raindrops was joined by another one--the singing of the little family of sparrows who live in the eaves of Jules’s front porch.

Were they singing with happiness that the rain was lighter now? Or that the saturated earth had driven to its surface the earthworms on which the love to feast? Or were they mourning the absence of the sun? I as I stood there pondering all these possibilities, I thought of this poem by Mary Oliver and wondered whether they were praying.

Why wouldn’t they be? And why shouldn’t I?

I Happened to be Standing

by Mary Oliver

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 sunflower? 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 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 be
if it isn’t a prayer?
So I just listened, my pen in the air.

From the collection, Devotions (Penguin Random House, 2017)