Poetry Break: Lost

Two Ravens (M.A. Reilly)

Lost

 - David Wagoner

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.

From Traveling Light: Collected and New Poems by David Wagoner. © 1999 by David Wagoner. Used with the permission of the University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

#SOL17: A Place Called, Here

Rainy Day Blues Triptych (M.A. Reilly, 2009)

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...

                                     - David Wagoner, Lost

I.

I am reading a blog post the other day and the writer mentions the Northern Lights.  I think of Rob immediately and sadness overcomes me. He will never hear the Northern Lights.  Most people speak about the colors of the lights--the sight, but my husband was adamant. He wanted to hear them.  

"Hear them?" I asked.
"Yep," said Rob. "They crackle, pop, hiss. It's like a radio station you almost have tuned, but not quite. Lots of static."
"What causes the sounds?" 

I listened, somewhat, as he launched into a lengthy explanation about charged particles and solar wind. And now I wished I had listened better.  

13 months after his death, the list of things my husband will not do is longer than the time at hand. He will not witness his only son graduate high school in a few weeks, nor send him off to college. These are things he will never know. I thought we would do most of the bucket list we informally compiled across the decades. I thought at the very least we would get to retire together and take that trip across the country we so often spoke about. It never occurred to me that Rob would die so quickly, so young.

Sometimes loss feels overwhelming and I want to slip the knot that tightens around my throat each time I think of the things that my sweet husband will never know.

II.

I have been lost the last year. The threads and narrative of my life have unraveled quicker than I can count to ten, and my hands have not been able to mend what has been torn. A year of grief alters the landscape and being lost has become more familiar than not.

David Wagoner says we should treat here like a powerful stranger and I know he is correct. Wherever I am standing feels strange, foreign.


III.

Go ahead, I tell myself,  be lost.
Say it out loud.
Yell to the sky, I am so lost!


IV.

And I think the hardest lesson grief teaches isn't simply, Stand still.
Rather it is: Let comfort find you.


V.

Friends, the very earth we call home is the comfort we most seek. And in the last year, the earth has found me, recasting the unfamiliar in cloth I have worn before.

I have learned to stand still and to trust that comfort will find me.

The birch trees have bent towards the ground and found me.
The wind has wrapped around me like a fine silk shawl.
The river has risen and taught me how to wade in, troubled water or not.
The cardinals have called to me near dusk. I have watched them wing from tree to tree and followed. An aerial map that has led me home.

How could I know in the depth of that grief, that it would be a baptism of sorts?


VI.

Wagoner tells us:

"Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.”

And I have.
And it did.


VII.

Stand still, friend.
Wherever you are is called, here.
Let comfort find you.

The Best Slow Dancer

The Best Slow Dancer

by David Wagoner

Under the sagging clotheslines of crepe paper
By the second string of teachers and wallflowers
In the school gym across the key through the glitter
Of mirrored light three-second rule forever
Suspended you danced with her the best slow dancer
Who stood on tiptoe who almost wasn't there
In your arms like music she knew just how to answer
The question mark of your spine your hand in hers
The other touching that place between her shoulders
Trembling your countless feet lightfooted sure
To move as they wished wherever you might stagger
Without her she turned in time she knew where you were
In time she turned her body into yours
As you moved from thigh to secrets to breast yet never
Where you could be for all time never closer
Than your cheek against her temple her ear just under
Your lips that tried all evening long to tell her
You weren't the worst one not the boy whose mother
Had taught him to count to murmur over and over
One slide two slide three slide now no longer
The one in the hallway after class the scuffler
The double clubfoot gawker the mouth breather
With the wrong haircut who would never kiss her
But see her dancing off with someone or other
Older more clever smoother dreamier
Not waving a sister somebody else's partner
Lover while you went floating home through the air
To lie down lighter than air in a moonlit shimmer
Alone to whisper yourself to sleep remember.

"The Best Slow Dancer" by David Wagoner from Traveling Light.© University of Illinois Press. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)