How to Pray by Julene Waffle (HOW TO Series)

How to Pray
by Julene Waffle

Go toward water.
Baptize your toes.
Stand amidst the trees
and tilt your chin to the canopy.
Hold your arms out
like the maples and oaks around you.
Close your eyes until
you feel as if you are floating.
Let the sun freckle your face golden.
Breathe Breathe
to the rhythm of the wind on the pond.
Then slowly flex your fists open and closed
as if flapping tiny wings, grasping air,
holding a child’s hand then letting go.
Silently open your mouth to let
the sighing of wind in leaves and the earth’s
groaning pleasure fill you
with pregnant letterless words.

IMAGE: The Face of Peace IV by Pablo Picasso (1950).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I find inspiration and stress relief in nature. The whole of the natural world inspires me and encourages me to stay positive whenever life becomes dark and cloudy. It focuses me. I try to capture the beauty of this gift of Earth and life as best as I can through language. This poem is how I feel every time I allow myself time to revel in nature’s beauty; it is my physical way of saying thank you to God or whatever higher power you might believe in.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Julene Waffle is a teacher in a rural New York State public school, an entrepreneur, a wife, a mother of three busy boys, and a writer. Her work has appeared in La Pressa, The English Journal, among other journals, and in the anthologies Civilization in Crisis and Seeing Things: Anthology of Poetry  and a chapbook So I Will Remember.  She finds inspiration in nature and her family, which includes her dogs. Visit her at wafflepoetry.com and on Twitter @JuleneWaffle.