A poem I love …

A poem by Elizabeth Bishop that I adore.

I realized that it needed to be shared with a few friends today.

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.

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I had kept it marked in my Poetry Speaks book in the hope of 'never having to put it on' … but after this morning it seemed that, like her poem - written when her friend had committed suicide - this had to be put on the blog.

The picture I 'manufactured' to go with it is not possible to put on now ... but it makes no difference.