If only life could be lived
in shades of black and white
like those in old photographs
where shades of sepia
and the spectrum of white to black blur
edges, cracks, crags,
definitions, delineations
to softened
airbrushed edits
of reality
leaving me able to fall
from the greatest of heights
to land softly
upon a loosely inflated mattress
no bruising, no bone breaking,
no soul shattering hard surface landings
in a life lived in shades of black and white
and sepia
where the sharp edged colors of harness
wash away.
I first wrote this a few years ago after reading Elizabeth Bishop’s work once again. Well, after revisiting Mary Oliver and gaining familiarity with Pablo Neruda this summer, I once again returned to Bishop’s work and then had to re-watch Reaching for the Moon. So I decided to dig this one out and tweak it and revise.
In this thing called losing,
Bishop said we become masters
And that losing isn’t a disaster.
No, not a disaster.
Losing socks and such stuff.
I’ve lost earrings, bracelets,
Expensive ones too, didn’t care
Beyond maybe a minute or two,
And never was it a disaster.
And no pain beyond a stab of nostalgia
Did I have upon saying goodbye
To three houses and two cities,
And never did I feel it a disaster.
And yes, it was no disaster
To bury my mother,
A father who really wasn’t,
The man who really was,
First one brother, then the other,
Then lastly, a wife.
With each, my body and soul
Savaged by a catastrophic hurricane, yes.
But no, no disaster.
No disaster is it, I’ll admit,
For a tiny bit of soul to erode
As I buried each.
But nothing, nothing did I ever master.
Except, maybe this—
I did not look for them-
Looking to forget them
Since they were gone,
Emptied of this earth.
No, I did not look to forget
While driving home
In darkness under a full moon
Lighted with regret
Of a new unfamiliar scent.
Yet the swirling of this sad scent
Is no, no real disaster.
No real disaster is it—
That I look to forget
A lost return now.
A return to life
Captured, fleeting, lost--
Filled with a scent
Of hope or a fool’s thought—
Matters not but now lost.
And in this thing
Called losing,
In which I am well-schooled,
As are we all,
I have tried to make an art,
To make an art of all this loss.
Yes, this may be no real disaster,
But Bishop lied.
There is no art in losing,
No art at all,
That I can find to master.
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Hearing The Mermaids Sing 