Prayer in the grass

These ubiquitous grasses and their shining seed heads line most of the trails I walk, awash in the morning’s golden backlight. Their shining ripples in the breeze are mesmerizing, bringing out a prayerfulness in me.

“I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

With your one wild and precious life?”

— Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day”