Welcome to 31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts–Day 22.

Another beautiful October Saturday… Around here, the temperature is dropping and it feels a little more like fall. I’ve mentioned before that I don’t like losing Summer. But according to today’s poem, we should practice losing something every day.

So today, I’ll zip up some fun fall boots over my jeans, which I can justify wearing now that we’re south of 80 degrees. I think I’ll find the art of losing’s not too hard to master. Cheers!

One Art

by Elizabeth Bishop

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.

///////////

Last weekend, I lost my newish sunglasses at my son’s football game.

I dropped them into my handbag, or so I thought, when I walked into the restroom. Turns out, I must have dropped them onto the floor beside my bag. But when I went back through every corner of the room, they were gone.

I miss them, and today I had to buy a new pair to replace them. It cost me, but I did receive a super cute pink and orange box to keep them in. It’s the little things… 🙂

All in all, it wasn’t a disaster.

Yesterday, I lost my cell phone. Correction: I misplaced my cell phone. Once again, I thought I dropped it into my handbag before I ran out the door to take the kids to school. Then I had to stay across town a few hours for a yearly doctor appointment and a couple other errands.

For the first hour, I reached for my phone 10 times. Okay, 20. I realized how big a part of my days it has become.

I realized it was really great to be without it for a bit. Once I stopped losing the memory of forgetting it.

When I returned home, it was right there on my kitchen desk, black case blending in with the granite. Right where I usually leave my bag.

So I checked my email real quick. Looked at the Weather Channel app. Opened Facebook and seriously strained to hold myself back from a quick scroll through my News Feed. (I’m convinced that one action alone causes the loss of too many of my hours.)

I opened my Runkeeper app and ran out the door to hit the trail, thanking God for a morning spent without my phone.