THE ART OF LOSING THINGS

Happy Poetry Friday! Roundup is at Language, Literacy and Love. And come back next Friday, when Roundup is HERE! I'll be giving away some volumes of poetry for all you word-lovers out there.

So, onto today's poem.

I've been losing things lately. At first it was little things like a novel left in a hotel room. Or my cell phone case (who knows where). Then I very nearly ran out of gas. (Ummm, distracted much?? That hasn't happened since I was a teenager!) And now I've graduated to bigger things I dare not mention here.

Tell me, dear readers... what is the most important/valuable/silly thing you have ever lost?

And now, in my attempt to reframe things, I give you a most famous villanelle by Elizabeth Bishop. Enjoy!

ONE ART

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.