Loss

Still Life with a Balloon

Wislawa Szymborska

Returning memories?

No, at the time of death

I’d like to see lost objects

return instead.

Avalanches of gloves,

coats, suitcases, umbrellas

come, and I’ll say at last:

what good’s all this?

Safety pins, two odd combs,

a paper rose, a knife,

some string — come, and I’ll say

at last: I haven’t missed you.

Please turn up, key, come out,

wherever you’ve been hiding,

in time for me to say

You’ve gotten rusty, friend!

Downpours of affidavits,

permits and questionnaires,

rain down and I will say:

I see the sun behind you.

My watch, dropped in a river,

bob up and let me seize you —

then, face to face, I’ll say:

Your so-called time is up.

And lastly, toy balloon

once kidnapped by the wind—

come home, and I will say:

there are no children here.

Fly out the open window

and into the wide world;

let someone else shout “Look!”

and I will cry.

We adjust to loss and learn to move on without that which we imagined we could not live without. But once we come to that realization, there is a certain satisfaction in confronting that reality and acknowleding our triumph over loss.  And yet there is a sadness that still remains. That's my take on this poem.

This was on Writer's Almanac but it so aptly describes my feelings I just had to post it here too.

Plans

Stuart Dischell

She plans to be a writer one day and live in the City of Paris,
Where she will describe the sun as it rises over Buttes-Chaumont.
"Today the dawn began in small pieces, sharp wedges of light
Broke through the clouds." She plans to write better than this
And is critic enough to know "sharp wedges" sound like cheese.
She plans to live alone in a place that has a terrace
Where she will drink strong coffee at a round white table.
Her terrace will be her cafe and she will be recognized
By the blue-smocked workers of the neighborhood, the concierges,
The locals at the comptoir of the tabac down the block,
And the girl under the green cross of the apothecary shop.
She plans to love her apartment where she will keep
Just one flower in a blue vase. She already loves the word apart-
Ment, whose halves please her when she sees them breaking
The line in her journal. She plans to learn the roots
Of French and English words and will search them out
As if she were hunting skulls in the catacombs.
On her walls she'll hang a timetable of the great events
Of Western History. She will read the same twenty books
As Chaucer. Every morning she will make up stories....
She looks around her Brighton room, at the walls,
The ceiling, the round knob of the rectangular door.
She listens to the voices of the neighbor's children.
A toilet flushes, then the tamp of cigarette on steel,
The flint flash of her roommate's boyfriend's lighter.
When she leaves she plans to leave alone, and every
Article she will carry, each shoe, will be important.
Like an architect she will plan this life, as once
The fortune in a cookie told her: Picture what you wish
To become, if you wish to become that picture.

"Plans" by Stuart Dischell, from Good Hope Road. © Viking, 1993.