Life is full of losses.
\nNobody warns you.
\nYou learn,
\none loss at a time.<\/p>\n
I could lose my eyes,
\nmy legs,
\nmy mouth,
\nbut I\u2019m not as cavalier about it
\nas Cat Stevens. He doesn\u2019t say
\nthat what you really lose
\nwith each of these losses
\nis your independence.<\/p>\n
Some losses are necessary,
\nlike innocence,
\nor inevitable,
\nlike virginity.<\/p>\n
Some people never lose
\ngullibility.
\nPoliticians and salespeople count on it.<\/p>\n
We lose our looks,
\nplastic surgery notwithstanding.
\nIt\u2019s good to have character as a backup.<\/p>\n
We lose lovers, parents, friends,
\nand we cope.<\/p>\n
We lose children,
\na loss I can\u2019t even imagine,<\/p>\n
and memories,
\na loss worse than death.<\/p>\n
When memories are gone,
\ndo we welcome loss of life?
\nNo one can tell us this,
\nor what lies on the other side.<\/p>\n
Like all the lessons of loss,
\nit requires experience,
\na step into the afterlife.
\nMaybe it isn\u2019t loss at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Life is full of losses. Nobody warns you. You learn, one loss at a time. I could lose my eyes, my legs, my mouth, but I\u2019m not as cavalier about it as Cat Stevens. He doesn\u2019t say that what you really lose with each of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":665,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,441],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-half-marathon-poem","category-poetry-prompt-responses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/665"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69938"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69974,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69938\/revisions\/69974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}