What looks like prayer

I was listening to Rachel Martin's podcast, Wild Card, last night. Her interviewee was Harrison Ford (listen here). The basic premise of the show is that guests pick a card with a question on it. They can skip one, and turn one back on the interviewer. Ford flipped this question back at Martin: "Is there anything in your life that feels like praying?"

What does prayer feel like to me?

Prayer is redolent of incense, of a milk-drunk baby, of a piece of toast caught just in time.  It can taste bitter and hot and bracing all at once, like that first cup of tea on a cold morning. It feels like cold salt water on my feet after a long walk, like my husband's hand reaching out in the night to brush away my bad dream.

What does prayer feel like to you?

...when it is August

 

..and when it is August, you can have August and abundantly so. — Emily Levine in "You Can't Have It All"

It sounds like August. The cicadas wild howl. The scurrying of dry leaves across the driveway. The firm thud as the nearly ripe apple that the squirrel has claimed for its own hits the ground.

It looks like August. The evening light gives me the side eye. "Have you written your syllabus yet?"

How much more August can I wring from these days? Before September drops into my lap with a thump?