Wednesday, June 21, 2017

What Have You Lost ? - A Description of Loss, A Poem

I have started reading a book of Collected Poems by Naomi Shihab Nye, an American poet and song writer , based in San Antonio.
She has collected Poems about Loss from different lives, through years, and has put them together in this book. It's the kind of book which is sad, happy, warm and poignant, all at the same time.
Naomi writes "Losing makes us miserable, startles us awake. It's also inevitable. Losing casts all kinds of shadows on what we thought we knew. Is there anything good about losing? Does loss help us discover anything? Maybe, we take better care of what we still have or notice, pay attention."

I have loved all the different descriptions of Life, loss in this book.
A few lines of my own on the same topic;

What Have You Lost?
The words speak with an intensity
more than necessary
They seep inside
I feel the rawness of the question
A movement in the mind
I sit, pensive silence pervades.

What have I lost?
I don't want to hear it,
open it, to the outside world
The pretty package has deep cracks, I know
But well hidden, they remain
I don't want to feel it
I don't want to relive that gap in time

The echoes of words lost , spoken,
Smiles of presence, connection
Sepia pics of memories past
I know I have lost

But, loss is layered
Always, in all ways
Loss of faith in life's structure
Loss of trust in its unfolding
Pain of falling-into-pieces plans

Fleeting fear when the phone rings
or does not ring

The inside of one is changed
put back together by band-aids of time
But, it's never the same, is it?

Irreplaceable losses, I live in their shadows
Breaths intertwined with them
Still, I live.


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