Lost in the Wild: 10 Poems That Will Take You on an Adventure

Nature, with its majestic landscapes and awe-inspiring beauty, provides an abundant source of inspiration for poets and dreamers alike. It whispers secrets in the rustling leaves, paints vivid pictures with its vibrant blooms, and orchestrates symphonies in the chorus of birdsong. In every dewdrop glistening on a petal or in the dance of sunlight through the canopy, poetry reveals itself effortlessly.

In the wild, we find solace, adventure, and a profound sense of connection. The wilderness calls to us, urging us to pause, to breathe, and to listen. It is within these untamed spaces that we are reminded of the intricate tapestry of life and the poetry that unfolds with every step.

That is why today, I wanted to share with you this collection of poems that are deeply inspired by the untamed wilderness.

As I venture into this journey of poetic exploration, I am reminded of the profound connection between nature and the art of poetry. It is a relationship that effortlessly intertwines, for life itself is poetry in motion.

The Peace Of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.


Wendell Berry

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

When I Am Among The Trees

When I am among the trees,

especially the willows and the honey locust,

equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,

they give off such hints of gladness.

I would almost say that they save me, and daily.



I am so distant from the hope of myself,

in which I have goodness, and discernment,

and never hurry through the world

but walk slowly, and bow often.



Around me the trees stir in their leaves

and call out, “Stay awhile.”

The light flows from their branches.



And they call again, “It's simple,” they say,

“and you too have come

into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled

with light, and to shine.”


Mary Oliver

Wild Pansy

As a seed, I was shot out the back end of a blue jay

when, heedless, she flew over the meadow.

She had swallowed me in my homeland when she spied me

lying easy under the sun—briefly, I called her Mother

before I passed through her gullet like a ghost.

In a blink of God’s eye I was an orphan. I trembled


where I fell, alone in the dirt. That first night

was a long night, early May and chilly, and I remember

rain filled my furrow. I called out for mercy—

only a wolverine wandered by. I cursed my luck,

I cursed the happenstance of this world, I smelled

his hot stink, but he nosed me deep into the mud—

this was the gift of obscurity. I germinated, hidden

from the giants of earth, the jostling stalks,

the various, boisterous bloomers, and this was my salvation.

After seven days and nights I pushed through—

yes. Here I am, kissable: your tiny, purple profusion.


Lisa Bellamy

Hermitage

It’s true there were times when it was too much
and I slipped off in the first light or its last hour
and drove up through the crooked way of the valley

and swam out to those ruins on an island.
Blackbirds were the only music in the spruces,
and the stars, as they faded out, offered themselves to me

like glasses of water ringing by the empty linens of the dead.
When Delilah watched the dark hair of her lover
tumble, she did not shatter. When Abraham

relented, he did not relent.
Still, I would tell you of the humbling and the waking.
I would tell you of the wild hours of surrender,

when the river stripped the cove’s stones
from the margin and the blackbirds built
their strict songs in the high

pines, when the great nests swayed the lattice
of the branches, the moon’s brute music
touching them with fire.

And you, there, stranger in the sway
of it, what would you have done
there, in the ruins, when they rose

from you, when the burning wings
ascended, when the old ghosts
shook the music from your branches and the great lie

of your one sweet life was lifted?


Joseph Fasano

The Call Of The Wild

Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there's nothing else to gaze on,
 Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore,
Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the blinding sunsets blazon,
 Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar?
Have you swept the visioned valley with the green stream streaking through it,
 Searched the Vastness for a something you have lost?
Have you strung your soul to silence? Then for God's sake go and do it;
 Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost.


Have you wandered in the wilderness, the sagebrush desolation,
 The bunch-grass levels where the cattle graze?
Have you whistled bits of rag-time at the end of all creation,
 And learned to know the desert's little ways?
Have you camped upon the foothills, have you galloped o'er the ranges,
 Have you roamed the arid sun-lands through and through?
Have you chummed up with the mesa? Do you know its moods and changes?
 Then listen to the Wild -- it's calling you.


Have you known the Great White Silence, not a snow-gemmed twig aquiver?
 (Eternal truths that shame our soothing lies.
)

Have you broken trail on snowshoes? mushed your huskies up the river,
 Dared the unknown, led the way, and clutched the prize?
Have you marked the map's void spaces, mingled with the mongrel races,
 Felt the savage strength of brute in every thew?
And though grim as hell the worst is, can you round it off with curses?
 Then hearken to the Wild -- it's wanting you.


Have you suffered, starved and triumphed, groveled down, yet grasped at glory,
 Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole?
"Done things" just for the doing, letting babblers tell the story,
 Seeing through the nice veneer the naked soul?
Have you seen God in His splendors, heard the text that nature renders?
 (You'll never hear it in the family pew.
)

The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do things --
 Then listen to the Wild -- it's calling you.


They have cradled you in custom, they have primed you with their preaching,
 They have soaked you in convention through and through;
They have put you in a showcase; you're a credit to their teaching --
 But can't you hear the Wild? -- it's calling you.

Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us;
 Let us journey to a lonely land I know.

There's a whisper on the night-wind, there's a star agleam to guide us,
 And the Wild is calling, calling .
 .
 .
 let us go.


Robert Frost

In The Clearing

After last night’s rain the woods
smell sensual—a mixture of leaves and musk.
The morels have disappeared, and soon I’ll come across
those yellow chanterelles, the kind they sell
in town at the farmers’ market. Once I saw
the Swedish woman who raises her own food
foraging for them, two blond boys
quarreling near the pickup, and the next morning
they were selling them from their stand beside the road.

Out here, among last year’s dead
leaves with the new shoots of spruces
poking through them, I’ve come to the place where light
brightens a glade of ferns and the log someone else
placed here—carved “B.W.”—where I sometimes sit
to listen to the birds. Today the sun is breaking through
the wet branches, revealing a clean sky,
brilliant, cerulean. Then, suddenly, a raft of scudding clouds

promising more rain. If it comes, I’ll read all afternoon—
Henry James, or maybe Eudora Welty’s
Delta Wedding, where so many characters
vie for attention I can never keep them straight.
Here, there’s no one else, no one to worry over
or argue with or love. Maybe the earth was meant
only for this: small comings and goings
on the forest floor, the understory astir
with its own secret life. If I sit still enough
among the damp trees, sometimes I see the world
without myself in it, and—it always surprises me—
nothing at all is lost.


Patricia Hooper

The Fable In The Forest

There is a fable in the forest
Whispered by the branches, as they blow.
A tale about the truth of leaving
Things that no longer help you grow.
For on the surface it looks simple,
Like you only need lace your boots,
But there is nothing quite as painful
As untangling your roots.
And proof is found in tree stumps
Of the price some pay to flee,
That they would cut their lives in half
To cut the time before they're free.
Yet from the little left behind
Life has been known to grow again,
For unless you take your roots
A part of you will still remain.

― Erin Hanson

Thanks for reading, I hope you have enjoyed these poems!