Feb 10 “I have made this place around you”

Monday February 10, 2014

Thinking about these work day posts has led me to look around for poets new to me.  A friend, some years ago, gave me  David Whyte’s The House of Belonging.  Her gift note wishes me a happy 60th so that puts it 14 years back.  It’s been sitting on my shelf waiting for me to pay attention.  Someone, the poet and my friend who gave this book to me, have created a place waiting for me to find it.  That’s the point of David Wagoner’s poem “Lost” which leads off David Whyte’s book.  It’s blown me away and  so far I haven’t gotten past it.

“Lost” echoes a wisdom many Lakota friends taught me 50 years ago when I came to the Pine Ridge Reservation to learn how to teach and to become a grown up.  I use 3 short sayings as one of my email signatures.

a wisdom-saying born on the Pine Ridge Lakota Reservation

“Time spent baking bread follows the pace of yeast”

“Motorcycling alone; I move as a  tiny person in a vast world”

“If I pause long enough, I  hear the sound of grass growing,  and trees, each at its own pace.”

Here’s David Wagoner’s way to say something similar.  Welcome to a new work week in the middle of February.

john sj

Lost

Stand still.   The trees ahead and bushes beside you

Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,

And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,

Must ask permission to know it and be known.

The forest breathes.  Listen.  It answers,

I have made this place around you.

If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.

No two trees are the same to Raven.

No two branches are the same to Wren.

If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,

You are surely lost.  Stand still. The forest knows

Where you are. You must let it find you.

David Wagoner (1976)

{Frontispiece in  David Whyte,  The House of Belonging, Many Rivers Press, 1997}