One art-that-you-wouldn't-consider-an-art-but-really-is-an-art

For my Psychiatric clinical the other day, I did some poetry reading with a few of the patients as a form of relaxation.  I pulled out one of my favorite poems, which I haven’t looked at in a while, and shared it with them.  Reading it again made me remember just how much I love it, and how much I cherish this writer’s insight.

One Art

by Elizabeth Bishop

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.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel.  None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch.  And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones.  And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied.  It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

 Elizabeth Bishop wonderfully describes the natural course of loss and recovery in life.  I think about all the people that have come in and out of my life, all of the different possessions that I have owned and lost over the years.  But yet, here I am—still living life with the world still turning.