Waiting prayers and Mary Oliver...

As I write this, my sister, Beth, is trying to recover from her kidneys shutting down and a blood infection.  My father, still in a nursing home, is determined to walk again although the jury is still out.  The wider family has questions, fears and concerns too deep for expression, so we all wait and pray in our own unique ways.  I turned to the poetry of Mary Oliver...

Summer begins again.
How many
do I still have?
Not a worthy questions,

I imagine.
Hope is one thing,
gratitude another
and sufficient

unto itself.
The white blossoms of the shad
have opened
because it is their time

to open,
the mockingbird
is raving
in the the thornbush.

How did it come to be
that I am no longer young
and the world
that keeps time

in its own way
has just been born?
I don't have the answers
and anyway I have become suspicious

of such questions,
and as for hope,
that tender advisement,
even that

I'm going to leave behind.
I'm just going to put on
my jacket, my boots,
I'm just going to go out

to sleep
all this night
in some unnamed, flowered corner
of the pasture.

Me, I'm going to take a long walk and then see what tomorrow brings ~ maybe a quick trip to Maryland ~ trusting that everything is opening and beginning and ending as it is supposed to open, begin or end.