‘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.’ Elizabeth Bishop
Loss habituation: for the first ten years you are allowed
a piece of elastic that holds your mittens together and then that’s it.
At age eleven, if not before, they detach your woollen hands
probably with silver scissors
or even a samurai sword. I don’t remember anything about it,
but, surely, it was quite a ceremony?
Thereafter, the losses simply happen
one after another, with an ever-greater survivor:
ultimately you or me.
Who realises in time that it’s a trap?That it’s not about the retention of
what will inevitably, at sometime, be lost, but always about
the connection itself. That last mitten string,
pop it, Jackie, in your plastic tank. If needs be, place it
in your brace case, Jack. Fasten one end,
Mr J. Devliet, around your wrist, the other about
her icy cold arm and sit still until it seems
as if a thread of daylight
takes its place.
Ruth Lasters
