What Have You Lost? - A Description of Loss, A Poem, An Introspection
I have started reading a book of Collected Poems by Naomi Shihab Nye, an American poet and songwriter, based in San Antonio. It has prompted me to do some deeper introspection into Loss, reality, and Life.
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"
If you have lost people close to your heart or faced health issues and the loss continues, don't despair. We are all in the same river, finding familiar pieces of Life to hold onto.
A few lines of my own on Loss -
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, unspoken
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
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.
Still, I breathe, sometimes shakily, sometimes deeply
Growing roots again in the present
Moments unfold
Life moves on without a backward glance
I move on too; no options given with holding of sorrow
It becomes one with my daily shadow
Rays of dawn come forth
Maybe there's hope left yet
Just maybe.