Poets teach us about being lost

Some time ago my friend Bob Van Hook sent me a poem written by a man who began losing his grip on memory a few years ago when he was 50 years old. I wrote about it earlier, and revisited it this morning as I was thinking about poetry for my National Poetry Month poemapalooza.

The author, David Hollies, prefaced the poem with this note: “I must have written this sometime last year. I found it on my desk. Another in a series of writings about my journey with dementia – something akin to Alzheimer’s. Feel free to share this with others.”

“I must have written this sometime last year. I found it on my desk.” A world of information in 14 words. As if Mr. Hollies is straddling a chasm between knowing and not knowing, between recognizing and being surprised, between being himself and watching himself, between climbing and falling.

I can’t stop thinking about this poem; it haunts me. Read it slowly, perhaps aloud.

Lost and Found

The first few times
Being lost was frightening
Stark, pregnant
With the drama of change
Then, I didn’t know
That everywhere is nowhere
Like the feeling when a ocean wave
Boils you in the sand
But as time goes by
Each occurrence of lostness is quieter
Falling from notice
Like the sound of trains
When you live near the tracks
Until one day
When a friend asks
"How often do you get lost?"
And I strain to recall a single instance
It was then that I realized
Being lost only has meaning
When contrasted with
Knowing where you are
A presumption that slipped out of my life
As quietly as smoke up a chimney
For now I live in a less anchored place
Where being lost is irrelevant
For now, only when there is a need
Do I discover where I am
No alarm, no fear
Just an unconscious check-in
Like glancing in the rear-view mirror.

-David Hollies

“Being lost,” as he says, “only has meaning when contrasted with knowing where you are.”