Letters to a young poet ...

...I would like to beg you dear Sir/Madam, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

- Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903 -

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.

- David Wagner -

What do you love?

"In the end

we will conserve

only what we love.

We will love

only what we

understand.

We will understand

only what we are

Taught."

- Baba Dioum, Senegalese Poet

and Environmentalist, 1937 -

Tree/Jack

It's your softness, your gentle spirit
That leans me to you
You are a place of safety
A wise old soul.

I sit my spine touching yours
Drawn by your compassion
I fall into your tender clasp
Held so caringly.

You know what is felt
Beyond any need for an
Exchange of words
I talk to you like no other.

You are my special friend
A most precious gift
Always to be cherished
Never to be forgotten.