Tulips in Morocco

One Art

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.

-- Elizabeth Bishop

Grandma's been dead for eight months now, and they buried her ashes in Arlington Cemetery last weekend, next to Grandpa's. I wasn't there. Perhaps I thought that one funeral was enough - not that funerals are ever really over. They're just the gatherings at the beginning that do their best to prepare us for the long absences, and those we have to face by ourselves.

I dreamed about her a few weeks ago. The dream didn't start out with her in it; Faith and I were in Morocco (of all places), walking through the streets. We had been doing this for what seemed like a long time, when I saw her, looking very out of place there, sitting on a park bench. She was wearing her bright nylon dress with the deep, almost lurid, purple, pink, and green floral pattern. Big flowers, exhuberant colors - Grandma wasn't into delicate patterns or pastels. It was the dress she wore for company. I asked her what she was doing there, surprised to see her, and she said that she was waiting for the tulips to come out. It would be another week, she said. I just had time to touch her soft, familiar shoulder before the dream broke.