Lost

Today after acupuncture, I took a stroll in the Hollywood neighborhood where my acupuncturist has her space. The houses on the street seem like sanctuaries    that their owners have lovingly created, with outdoor installation art on their front lawns and the areas beside the street, vegetable gardens alongside the sidewalk, spots for children to swing on trees, paint rocks at their mini picnic tables and lounge on their mini adirondack chairs. It's like stepping into a fantasy Lilliputian land, a site one doesn't happen upon often in the city, but maybe it does, in this city! On one lawn, is a frame enclosing a poem that changes from time to time, and always beckons me to linger and read it. Today's poem,  Lost , was particularly beautiful and engaging, and it really spoke to me about life; the lessons to be learned through the spirituality of nature; the pause; noticing and being; especially being where you are at this moment, this perfect moment. It seemed like a "custom made for me followup" to my treatment. It was a gift. As I write, I long to leave the unusually hot city and head out to the lake this weekend, under the umbrella of trees amongst the songs of my songbirds as they munch the food I have left for them, but for now, this moment that I sit writing, is the one perfect moment that I have, right now. If you would like to have the lovely poem read to you by the author, here is the link: Lost 

                            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."