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.

this is my favourite poem in the whole world. it's not even slightly obscure, it's not particularly unusual, but its kind of perfect to me. partly because even though it's kind of sad... it's optimistic but the subject matter of losing, losing all the time is still sad... but despite that, it doesn't make me feel sad. it just paints a picture for me. if this were a photograph, it'd be a faded one of a cluttered, charactered little house, a sense of things misplaced and old, forgotten loss. and there'd be someone in it, an old person who's lost somebody but they're smiling and in the chaos around them they just feel at home. although I guess this isn't really about loss being easy, or accepting it.

fine well I guess I'm in a pretty weird mood.

(fyi; I lost the line breaks when I posted this. it's not supposed to be all forced into one gap-less paragraph)