Poetry Sunday: Losses by Wesley McNair

Losses are a part of life and how we deal with them, one could argue, says just about everything anyone needs to know about the kind of person we are. 

I love the images of Wesley McNair's poem about loss, particularly the part about the widower who "can't stop reaching for the other side of the bed" until finally one odd afternoon...  
"watching something

as common as the way light from the window

lingers over a vase on the table, or how the leaves

on his backyard tree change colors all at once

in a quick wind, he begins to feel a lightness,

as if all his loss has led to finding just this."

Loss can teach us, if only we are open to learning.

Losses

by Wesley McNair

It must be difficult for God, listening

to our voices come up through his floor

of cloud to tell Him what’s been taken away:

Lord, I’ve lost my dog, my period, my hair,

all my money. What can He say, given

we’re so incomplete we can’t stop being

surprised by our condition, while He

is completeness itself? Or is God more

like us, made in His image—shaking His head

because He can’t be expected to keep track

of which voice goes with what name and address,

He being just one God. Either way, we seem

to be left here to discover our losses, everything

from car keys to larger items we can’t search

our pockets for, destined to face them

on our own. Even though the dentist gives us

music to listen to and the assistant looks down

with her lovely smile, it’s still our tooth

he yanks out, leaving a soft spot we ponder

with our tongue for days. Left to ourselves,

we always go over and over what’s missing—

tooth, dog, money, self-control, and even losses

as troubling as the absence the widower can’t stop

reaching for on the other side of his bed a year

later. Then one odd afternoon, watching something

as common as the way light from the window

lingers over a vase on the table, or how the leaves

on his backyard tree change colors all at once

in a quick wind, he begins to feel a lightness,

as if all his loss has led to finding just this.

Only God knows where the feeling came from,

or maybe God’s not some knower off on a cloud,

but there in the eye, which tears up now

at the strangest moments, over the smallest things.