One Art

Over packing and getting ready to move, and watching "In Her Shoes" in which this poem featured, Elizabeth Bishop comes back to become a rather good friend:

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.

As it always seems to me upon moving, and packing, and relocating,

The art of packing isn't hard to master, and quite the same,
Though different; as losing,
Yourself in labels and boxes with a name.

Pack something every day. Put another part
of yourself in a box, draw lines, imagine
That you can be divided up, a mind, a heart.

I packed two photographs, from two
Places, two faces, some memories lost
Another preserved, unused, untrue.

Even then it's impossible to lose; the
Fear of losing overcome by fear of use
The art of packing isn't hard to master
The fear of losing forgot the fluster.