It's the middle of June and I'm sitting in the middle of the couch, straddling the seam of two cushions. The sun’s not quite here but something of its light has siphoned through the clouds, a touch of warmth hitting the house, and I know that, though the signs aren’t clear, summer is sidling into my bones, too, my hair, my skin - something in me preparing to fly, free itself of the usual restraint. Still, the heart resists, something in her yearning for what was. It is hard to replace history with a future yet unnamed. And so, astride a present tense the body rests, equipoised between stories. This morning, birdsong woke me, a refrain only the soloist knew. She finished one verse, and started over again.
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 down 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?
-from The Summer Day, by Mary Oliver