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.
- 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. - Lost, David Wagoner
“Because everybody who has ever lost their way in life has felt the nagging insistence of that question. At some point we all look up and realize we are lost in a maze,
John Green • Looking for Alaska
Tao-ch’uan says, “Looking for someone else isn’t as good as looking for yourself. My song goes: ‘Water drops turn into ice, we believe / green willows, fragrant plants, forms without end / spring flowers, autumn moon, things never stop / listen in quiet to the partridge cry.”
Red Pine • The Diamond Sutra: The Perfection of Wisdom
The deep woods are as alien as the deepest ocean where life has its own priorities
“Following unnamed rivers, lost upon the interpenetrating paths of distant mountains, My strength failing and my vitality exhausted, I cannot find the ox . . . Far from home, I see many cross-roads, but which way is the right one I know not. Greed and fear, good and bad, entangle me.” —First Oxherding Picture