David Wagoner wrote this poem. It reminds me, as I enter Sabbath, there is a need to be still, to be quiet, and listen attentively. It is in the quiet I hear answers and sometimes those are new questions without the certainty of a ready answer I sought. Those answers sought are often formed before the question is posed.
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.
About ivonprefontaine
In keeping with bell hooks and Noam Chomsky, I consider myself a public and dissident intellectual. Part of my work is to move beyond (transcend) institutional dogmas that bind me to defend freedom, raising my voice to be heard on behalf of those who seek equity and justice in all their forms.
I completed my PhD in Philosophy of Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA. My dissertation and research was how teachers experience becoming teachers and their role as leaders.
I focus on leading, communicating, and innovating in organizations. This includes mindfuful servant-leadership, World Cafe events, Appreciative Inquiry, and expressing one's self through creativity. I offer retreats, workshops, and presentations that can be tailored to your organzations specific needs.
I published peer reviewed articles about schools as learning organizations, currere as an ethical pursuit, and hope as an essential element of adult eductaion. I published three poems and am currently preparing my poetry to publish as an anthology of poetry.
I present on mindful leadership, servant leadership, schools as learning organizations, how teachers experience becoming teachers, assessement, and critical thinking. I facilitate mindfulness, hospitality retreats. and World Cafe Events using Appreciative Inquiry.
I am writing and researching about various forms of leadership, how teachers inform and form their identity as a particular teacher, schools as learning organizations, hope, nonviolence and its anticipatory relationship with the future, as essential elements to teaching and learning.
Academic publications can be found at Ivon Gile Prefontaine on ResearchGate
Teacher as Transformer 
The poem is very good, but your intro was even better. Thanks for the quiet thoughts for the Sabbath.
Nancy
Thank you Nancy
Must log off the internet from time to time…
I do once a week on Sunday. It has proven beneficial and created a space for me that is ncessary.
Very Nice poem. In breath experience.
Thank you Lvsrao.
very nice poetry! 🙂
It truly is.
what a poem! this is just amazing!
Thanks so much for your marvelous poems. You never cease to inspire us. So, we have nominated you for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award! http://globalgrazers.wordpress.com/2012/12/09/very-inspiring-blogger-award/
Thank you so much for your kindness.
That is a very good poem.
Seems to me that the questions are much more important than the answers sought. Sometimes we have to work on the questions, defining and refining them… till the question itself leads to a deeper understanding of what it is that will bring true understanding…
I agree Shimon. It is the way we hold the questions and seek the next question that takes us to deeper places.