What is Prayer Like?

This poem by Mary Oliver (from her collection Why I Wake Early) has been on my mind for a week and half or so. The best way to get a song like this out of your head is to share it:

Where Does the Temple Begin,
Where Does It End?

There are things you can't reach. But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.

The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.

And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.

The snake slides away; the fish jumps, like a little lily,
out of the water and back in; the gold fiches sing
from the unreachable top of the tree.

I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.

Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around
as though with your arms open.

And thinking: maybe something will come, some
shining coil of wind,
or a few leaves from any old tree--
they are all in this too.

And now I will tell you the truth.
Everything in the world
comes.

At least, closer.

And, cordially.

Like the nibbling, tinsel-eyed fish; the unloosing snake.
Like goldfinches, little dolls of gold
fluttering around the corner of the sky

of God, the blue air.

Mary's poetry really does evoke me in the same sort of feelings I get where reading Rumi, David Whyte, or the Desert Fathers. Amazing stuff!

-t