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lil  ·  2452 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: How Could I Get Lost? [A Usenet thread from 1991]

bfx: say more. Why did this interest you? What is it about the author's getting or being lost that caught your attention?

Remember the first line of Dante's Inferno

    Midway upon the journey of our life

    I found myself within a forest dark,

    For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Having lost the pathway, the poet says, "I found myself within the forest dark."

---------------

I've also always liked this poem:

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 Wagoner

(1999)