Favorite Poems - Poetry Of Loss. Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Dickinson plus 1

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.

One Art

Elizabeth Bishop

A Loss Of Something Ever Felt I 

A loss of something ever felt I—
The first that I could recollect
Bereft I was—of what I knew not
Too young that any should suspect

A Mourner walked among the children
I notwithstanding went about
As one bemoaning a Dominion
Itself the only Prince cast out—

Elder, Today, a session wiser
And fainter, too, as Wiseness is—
I find myself still softly searching
For my Delinguent Palaces—

And a Suspicion, like a Finger
Touches my Forehead now and then
That I am looking oppositely
For the site of the Kingdom of Heaven—

A Loss Of Something Ever Felt I

Emily Dickinson

my heart is a wasteland

my heart is a wasteland
wind and uncounted drops of rain 
obscure my steps

your breath ...

a fair summer breeze turned cold
plucks icily at my soul

carving to it's depths
a gaping freeze-dried hole

... a wasteland of regrets

fate and misery are starving dogs 
slinking hungrily at my heels

it feels ... in fact i am ... bereft

destroyed and mourning, sinking low
with the magnitude of all i lost

and those oh so many moments
i will never know