One of my all time favorite poems is One Art by Elizabeth Bishop. Every time I read it, the words just pull me in a little bit more. How could they not?
"The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master."
"The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master."
I think about these lines a lot, especially in the past year or so. A lot has been lost and most of it never really belonged to me. When I am feeling particularly self-indulgent, I tell myself, what have I not lost? I have lost a parent who I never really felt I had. Now in my early thirties I feel that I have lost my youthfulness, whatever that ephemeral term meant. I have also lost my metabolism and that is a pretty concrete concept.
