“Over-explanation separates us from astonishment.”-Eugene Ionesco
note: I just read the poem “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop quoted in the article Living With Cancer: Practicing Loss by SUSAN GUBAR APRIL 24, 2014, New York Times.
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.
Mundane task of every day
to make a living
you cup your arms
to measure weight of struggle
“branches of the whole tree
wildly spreading shoots”.
God is in the particulars
and “comes to us
disguised as our life.”
You bow seeking silence.
On some mornings
dreamers and early risers
travel in flames and floating baskets
of hot air balloons
over a landscape of hills
covered in whiteness,
vineyards in early bloom.
Cyclists attired in solemn black
or patches of colors,
dot the roads,
a pilgrimage of solitude
Travelers in their own
separate worlds living
a dream of spring.
He is dead.
He is risen.
“difficult and easy”
to dance and to cry
“don’t eliminate,
but allow
each other”.
“Living in God”.
note: adapted from : Life is Hard And “My Yoke is Easy”, Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation, https://cac.org