Fern Prayers

Today I played with a small fern frond that I picked on my walk in the neighborhood this morning. It had fallen down and was going to soon fade.

My intention when I picked the fern was to make another sun print. But first I decided to photograph it on a white background. The images I made today are my

Fern Prayers

Here is the wet sun print shortly after I took it out of the water rinse.

When it’s dry I will scan the print and photograph it again. I plan to compare the results from scanning versus making a photograph of the print and then choose the method that seems to give the best results for future sun prints.

And here is a Mary Oliver poem from a book of poetry I received this week from a dear friend. Yesterday I cuddled up in my favorite chair, purring cat in my lap, and read Mary Oliver poems. Can there be a better way to spend a quiet afternoon?

I HAPPENED 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

   crossed 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 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 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 be

   if it isn’t a prayer?

So I just listened, my pen in the air.

   — Mary Oliver,  A Thousand Mornings