I have a wonderful book about poetry and healing, it’s square-ish,seven inches by nine inches, and at least an inch thick. When all else fails, I generally can find a poem or a paragraph that will fill the need of the moment.
This morning I turned to a new chapter, heading reading: Giving Yourself Permission To Be Wild and Magnificent. It was on the right page, facing a simple poem on the left page:
“Stand still. The trees ahead and the 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 bush does is lost to you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.”
………..DAVID WAGONER, from the book, Poetic Medicine,
by John Fox
Sometimes my room is my forest. I can suddenly stop, think,
what am I going to get —- and it finds me if I just stay still.
If I just stay still.
And then, it’s summer, maybe I will find that forest and
let it find me.
Meanwhile, I’m Here.
with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette