bits on the beach

Today I found a jacket to match my shoes and a fish picked clean by the gulls . . .

. . bright colours accentuated by the light from a threatening storm and motley shapes and a lot of plastic . . . and a rubber glove in the foreground. Came across three more all left hands.

Since the fishing boats are launched by a caterpillar machine and beached by winch, items are ordered in lines to allow for this movement up and down, but there’s also a higgledy-piggledy look too that matches the tumbling character  of the Old Town buildings . . .

. . . a collection of useful objects that look like detritus . .  and the inhabitants.

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 beloved 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!) a disaster  Elizabeth Bishop  One Art