Stand Still

Just before a session with a new hypnotherapy client, I came across David Wagoner’s poem “Lost.”

I read it once and took a screenshot.

I was about to sit down with someone who was trying very hard to figure something out in her life, and something about the poem felt important. I thought maybe she needed to hear it.

So I read it to her.

The funny thing is, I haven’t stopped reading it myself.

Here it is:

Lost
David Wagoner

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 on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

I’ve probably read it twenty times since then, and every time I do, I seem to read a different poem.

I don’t know how that’s possible.

It’s twelve lines long. There aren’t any particularly difficult words.

Stand still.

You’re lost.

Pay attention.

The forest knows where you are.

I get it.

Except apparently I don’t.

Because I’ll read it again and suddenly get stuck on “powerful stranger.”

I don’t remember that being there.

Then I’ll read it another day and it’s Raven and Wren.

How did I keep reading past Raven and Wren?

Another time it’s simply the word Here.

It has started to feel a little like the experience the poem is describing. I keep thinking I know where I am, and then I look around and realize I haven’t actually been paying very close attention.

I do this in my life too.

When I don’t know what to do, I think.

A lot.

I can turn something over endlessly. I can make a convincing argument for one direction and, given another twenty minutes, make an equally convincing argument for the opposite direction.

I don’t think I’m unusual in this.

When we’re confused, we want more information. When we’re uncertain, we think harder. When we don’t know which direction to go, we try to figure it out.

And sometimes that works.

But lately I’ve been wondering what the mind actually has available to it when we ask it to solve a problem.

Mostly, it has the past.

What worked before. What didn’t. What we’ve been taught. What we’ve learned about ourselves. All the decisions that got us here.

That’s an enormous amount of useful information.

But what happens when none of it knows where we’re going?

If I’m walking a path someone else has walked, I can ask for directions.

If I’ve walked it before, I can use my memory.

But if I’m doing something genuinely different, something that belongs to this particular version of me at this particular moment, there may be no directions.

There may not even be a path yet.

And my mind really doesn’t like that.

So it starts making one.

Maybe don’t do that.

Remember what happened last time.

Wait until you’re more certain.

You should probably know where this leads first.

Some of these thoughts might be wise.

Some might be fear.

The annoying part is that they often sound exactly the same.

And I wonder if that’s part of the problem with waiting until we’re certain.

Certainty usually requires evidence, and evidence comes from what has already happened.

If I’m about to do something genuinely new, how could I possibly have evidence that it will work?

I can have instinct. I can have curiosity. I can notice that something in me moves toward it.

But certainty may be the one thing the new path cannot give me.

Maybe sometimes asking for certainty is really asking the future to prove itself before we agree to enter it.

I keep coming back to Wagoner here.

Not because I think the poem has an answer.

It doesn’t tell the lost child which direction to walk.

It tells the child not to walk.

Stand still.

I love that.

Don’t solve the forest yet.

Just notice where you are.

There is a line I barely noticed the first few times I read the poem:

“No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.”

I think this might be my favorite part now.

And somehow I barely noticed it at first.

Maybe because to me a forest is a forest.

I see trees.

Raven sees this tree.

Wren sees this branch.

I keep thinking about that.

Maybe this is something we do when we get lost in our own lives. Everything starts to look like something we have seen before.

This relationship becomes that relationship.

This fear becomes an old fear.

This version of ourselves gets confused with the person we used to be.

We reduce the forest to “forest.”

And then we try to find our way through the present using what we know about the past.

But no two trees are the same.

No two branches are the same.

And neither are we.

Then there’s that word Here.

“Wherever you are is called Here.”

At first I read that as a fairly simple instruction about acceptance.

Be where you are.

But that isn’t actually what Wagoner says.

He says we have to treat Here “as a powerful stranger.”

I kept reading past that too.

A stranger is someone we don’t already know.

And maybe that is what feels so difficult about being genuinely Here.

We don’t get to decide in advance what we’re going to find.

Maybe we need to offer the present the same courtesy we would offer a stranger.

Meet it before deciding what it means.

Maybe even meet ourselves that way.

Because something may have changed.

That requires a kind of stillness.

Not stillness as relaxation. Not even stillness as quiet.

I mean the kind of stillness where, for a moment, we stop trying to get somewhere else.

This is part of what interests me so much about sound baths, meditation, and hypnosis.

There can be a tremendous amount happening during a sound bath. The room can shake. Gongs can become enormous. Thoughts can keep coming.

Stillness doesn’t mean none of that is happening.

It means we don’t immediately have to do something about it.

We can notice.

Maybe one possibility feels slightly different from another.

A little tightening.

A little opening.

Something we can’t explain yet.

Something that doesn’t quite fit the story we have already been telling ourselves.

I don’t think any of this gives us some magical access to the correct answer.

There may be no answer.

Our intuition can be wrong.

Stillness doesn’t make us omniscient.

But maybe it lets us stop demanding certainty long enough to notice what is actually happening.

And I think that’s what keeps happening when I return to this poem.

I arrive thinking I know what it says.

Then I stand still somewhere inside it for a minute.

Powerful stranger.

Raven.

Wren.

Here.

And something I swear wasn’t there before appears.

The poem hasn’t changed.

I have.

Or maybe I’ve simply become quiet enough to notice another tree.

I originally saved “Lost” because I thought someone else needed to hear it.

Instead, I keep finding myself back inside it.

I still don’t know if Wagoner’s poem tells us how to find our way.

Maybe that’s why I like it.

It doesn’t give us a direction.

It gives us a place to begin.

Stand still.

Let the old maps become quiet for a moment.

Look closely enough to discover that this tree is not that tree. That this moment is not the last one. That the person standing here is not exactly the person who stood here before.

And then there is that strange final instruction:

“The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.”

I don’t completely understand what that means.

I think that’s why I keep reading it.