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
What Mr. Wagoner suggests in this little fable is that no matter how sure you are that you’ve lost your way, you haven’t--not really, because the world around knows very well where it is and what it is and even where you are within it. The world may feel entirely out of whack, but your dislocation is quite personal, he says. You may think yourself lost, but rest assured the trees around you are not.
And if you listen, you’ll hear as much. After all, those birds know very well which of a thousand branches is theirs. The forest knows where it is and what it is, Wagoner says, so just stay tuned. Listen. Watch. Look around until you get it because “If what a tree or bush does is lost on you,/you are surely lost.”
Isn’t that a sweet line? Confused? Wagoner says. Then “stand still” because surely the real world around you knows where it is and where you are.
The only thing I understood about landscape difference when, 40 years ago, I moved to Siouxland, was that there was an east here. I’d grown up a mile or so west of Lake Michigan, which meant there was no east. “Go east ‘till your hat floats,” people used to say, a quip that had this faint hint of nothing less than death.
Siouxland had an east, which, at first, seemed odd. It also had very few trees, leafy smudges on a long yawning landscape like nothing I’d seen. I remember reading, once upon a time, that the literature of the Great Plains was frequented by mad women, wives and mothers who, in the days of sod houses, sometimes went crazy in the endless openness with no place to hide, no place to nest. On the Great Plains in those early treeless days, some felt continually exposed, forever naked.
I grew up on a lakeshore. The richest moments of my childhood probably happened in and around woods, trees, like the ones that stand so knowingly in David Wagoner’s poem. The only real painting I own is of those very woods, a painting that’ll get thrown out when our children sift through our things someday; after all, I’m the one who knows what grace is in the lakeshore.
If I’d waited for trees to tell me where I was when I got to Siouxland, I’d have been lost. Five minutes in any direction from where I live and I’m a wanderer in a treeless world. I’ve got to drive about a half hour west to take a walk in a woods, and what’s there doesn’t sprawl far enough to allow me or anyone else, for that matter, to get lost.
But Wagoner’s poem isn’t about trees, even the cartoon trees who give directions when you’ve lost yours. It’s about finding a place. About listening to the sounds of the place you’re in, hearing the place the wind, being still and small enough to let the place find you.
I think that may have happened in my life; but I also know that, as Wagoner says, it’s something one has to work at: one has to listen, to see, to hear. With regards to the world around me, I think I’ve become, in a way, as much of a Siouxland native as I ever will. I found myself and found my way, but not without help.
There's a commemorative medal hanging from a tree stump behind me. It was a gift when I retired from teaching just down the road for 37 years. Add four more years for the time I spent here as a student, and the tally amounts to most of a lifetime in a place with few trees.
It's the fifth year of my retirement. Just down the road from where we live, there's a woods and a river, rarities in the region. We feel blessed to be here.
I'm happy to say I'm not a stranger out here on the emerald edge of the Great Plains. I’ve become, landscape-wise, a native. That's what I think, David Wagoner. It seems to me that endless landscapes all around have found me.
______________________
*First appeared here on April 12, 2012.
And if you listen, you’ll hear as much. After all, those birds know very well which of a thousand branches is theirs. The forest knows where it is and what it is, Wagoner says, so just stay tuned. Listen. Watch. Look around until you get it because “If what a tree or bush does is lost on you,/you are surely lost.”
Isn’t that a sweet line? Confused? Wagoner says. Then “stand still” because surely the real world around you knows where it is and where you are.
The only thing I understood about landscape difference when, 40 years ago, I moved to Siouxland, was that there was an east here. I’d grown up a mile or so west of Lake Michigan, which meant there was no east. “Go east ‘till your hat floats,” people used to say, a quip that had this faint hint of nothing less than death.
Siouxland had an east, which, at first, seemed odd. It also had very few trees, leafy smudges on a long yawning landscape like nothing I’d seen. I remember reading, once upon a time, that the literature of the Great Plains was frequented by mad women, wives and mothers who, in the days of sod houses, sometimes went crazy in the endless openness with no place to hide, no place to nest. On the Great Plains in those early treeless days, some felt continually exposed, forever naked.
I grew up on a lakeshore. The richest moments of my childhood probably happened in and around woods, trees, like the ones that stand so knowingly in David Wagoner’s poem. The only real painting I own is of those very woods, a painting that’ll get thrown out when our children sift through our things someday; after all, I’m the one who knows what grace is in the lakeshore.
If I’d waited for trees to tell me where I was when I got to Siouxland, I’d have been lost. Five minutes in any direction from where I live and I’m a wanderer in a treeless world. I’ve got to drive about a half hour west to take a walk in a woods, and what’s there doesn’t sprawl far enough to allow me or anyone else, for that matter, to get lost.
But Wagoner’s poem isn’t about trees, even the cartoon trees who give directions when you’ve lost yours. It’s about finding a place. About listening to the sounds of the place you’re in, hearing the place the wind, being still and small enough to let the place find you.
I think that may have happened in my life; but I also know that, as Wagoner says, it’s something one has to work at: one has to listen, to see, to hear. With regards to the world around me, I think I’ve become, in a way, as much of a Siouxland native as I ever will. I found myself and found my way, but not without help.
There's a commemorative medal hanging from a tree stump behind me. It was a gift when I retired from teaching just down the road for 37 years. Add four more years for the time I spent here as a student, and the tally amounts to most of a lifetime in a place with few trees.
It's the fifth year of my retirement. Just down the road from where we live, there's a woods and a river, rarities in the region. We feel blessed to be here.
I'm happy to say I'm not a stranger out here on the emerald edge of the Great Plains. I’ve become, landscape-wise, a native. That's what I think, David Wagoner. It seems to me that endless landscapes all around have found me.
______________________
*First appeared here on April 12, 2012.
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