A beautiful poem by Margaret Gibson that says it all so well

Guest Editor: Marilyn Nelson, Academy of American Poets Chancellor, March 18, 2014

Losing It by Margaret Gibson What little I know, I hold closer, more dear, especially now that I take the daily reinvention of loss as my teacher. I will never graduate from this college, whose M.A. translates "Master of Absence," with a subtext in the imperative: Misplace Anything. If there's anything I want, it's that more people I love join the search party. You were once renowned among friends for your luck in retrieving from the wayside the perfect bowl for the kitchen, or a hand carved deer, a pencil drawn portrait of a young girl whose brimming innocence still makes me ache.  Now the daily litany of common losses goes like this: Do you have your wallet, keys, glasses, gloves, giraffe?  Oh dear, I forgot my giraffe--that's the preferred response, but no:  it's usually the glasses, the gloves, the wallet. The keys I've hidden. I've signed you up for "safe return" with a medallion (like a diploma) on a chain about your neck.   Okay, today, this writing, I'm amused by the art of losing. I bow to Elizabeth Bishop, I try "losing faster"--but when I get frantic, when I've lost my composure, my nerve, my patience, my compassion, I have only what little I know to save me.  Here's what I know: it's not absence I fear, but anonymity. I remember taking a deep breath, stopped in my tracks.  I'd been looking for an important document I had myself misplaced; high and low, no luck yet. I was "beside myself," so there may have indeed been my double running the search party. "Stop," you said gently.  "I'll go get Margaret.  She'll know where it is." "But I'm Margaret," I wailed. "No, no." You held out before me a copy of one of my books, pointing to the author's photograph, someone serious and composed. "You know her.  Margaret Gibson, the poet."  We looked into each others' eyes a long time. The earth tilted on its axis, and what we were looking for, each other and ourselves, took the tilt, and we slid into each others' arms, holding on for dear life, holding on.     Copyright © 2014 by Margaret Gibson. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem  "In 2007, my husband David McKain, also a poet and author of a memoir, experienced significant memory loss and was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. 'Losing It' is taken from a book of poems, Broken Cup, scheduled for release from Louisiana State University Press in September, 2014. The poems in Broken Cup, bear witness to the experiences of memory loss and of caregiving."   --Margaret Gibson