Poetry Friday: Elizabeth Bishop

I'm slow to Friday. Slow to Poetry Friday. Just plain slow today. 

While getting ready this morning, I realized I couldn't find my phone. I looked in all the probably places. Hubby helped me look with different eyes. I called myself. Nope. No one home. So I sat down to breakfast.  Hubby says, "When that happens to me, I have to retrace my steps." So between bites of scrambled egg and yogurt and strawberries, I mentally walked myself back in the door from last night. Clothes. I put clothes in the dryer. Went to check and there it was, on top of the dryer, lying on a folded towel. No wonder I couldn't hear the thing vibrate.

So we're getting ready to go out the door and hubby says, "I can't find my watch." We looked in all the usual places. No watch. I said, "You know, when that happens to me, I have to retrace my steps." We cracked up laughing. No time to retrace steps, so he's probably been retracing them all day long. Hopefully the watch will show up tonight.

I got in the car, planning to plug my phone in, since it had been on battery power all night and was nearly dead. I couldn't find the phone charger. 

So here is the perfect poem for losing things.

 

One Art
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.

Read the rest here.

More Poetry Friday with Renée over at No Water River.