Moving on is easy
Like taking candy from a child
Like transplanting a tree;
Ask those of us who have
How painful some cries can be
How quickly trees wither on unfamiliar soil.
Moving on is easy
Like walking miles on a treadmill
Satisfied with electronic validation
And feeling hollow just the same.
Moving on is easy
Like watching a fish flounder on land
Or discarded jellyfish dessicating on the beach
And gasping for breath yourself.
I have moved on
From one memory to the next
Like a bird in a burnt forest
Flitting from ash to dust.
The poem is titled ‘One Art’
This is excellent
Incidentally, came across this poem by Elizabeth Bishop on brainpickings. If only we could hear poems talk to each other :) —
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.
I think someone needs to restart a collab poetry site like BlackRiverPoets!