Found this again

 Before break, while going through some files on my hard drive, I found this poem I wrote. I did post it on the blog before, and I was startled - after reading it in my files - to find I wrote it several months before several big losses in my life. I guess I mostly wrote it in memory of Steve, who had died about a year before I posted it.

But I think it's one of the better poems I've written recently (even if the scansion isn't perfect), so here it is again:

The Persistence of Attachment

(“To me this cup is already broken. Because I know its fate, I can enjoy it fully here and now. And when it’s gone, it’s gone.” Ajahn Chah)

 

The cup is already broken

The dress is already torn

The person you love is already dead

So there’s really no sense to mourn.

 

Wrong the attachment to worldly things,

Both Jesus and the Buddha taught.

But still every loss for me still stings,

And lost joys stay in my thoughts

 

Living in the moment is the key

But that, I have never mastered

From my attachments, it’s hard to get free

And each new loss feels a disaster

 

I learn to glue the pieces of the cup

(From that, the art of Kintsugi was born)

The dress, I alter or sew it up

But the person, I simply must mourn.

 

Over time, the loss becomes less,

But there are things that revive it

And while I fix the cup or the dress

The loved one’s loss, I must simply survive it