Thursday, June 20, 2013

uncranky

I have been flustered all day.
I can't seem to shake being frustrated.
I can't seem to get uncranky.
I keep forgetting things, missing things, overlooking.

Driving back from lunch, where I dropped a bottle of wine in the parking lot of where I had purchased the wine, I thought of this poem (one of my favorites).

Accept the hour badly spent.

*

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.

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