GAIN AND GAIN AGAIN by W. Mahlon PurdinThey say (I've heard it over and over again)
That loss (this is open to many definitions) is gain.
But loss is loss (it's gone, no?) so where's gaining losing stuff?
Ahhh ... that's the thing. Losing stuff is gain. But why'd you have it
In the first place? Didn't need it, didn't want it, like hell.
You had it (me too) because you really (I really) wanted it.
And there, now it's gone. So, in some ethereal way we are cleaner now,
Less encumbered with matter's abstractions, affairs of artifacts
As it were. But the damn thing's gone, and I thought I needed it.
The feeling of material entanglement is just a foreboding of decline
And ownership waning, since, after all, what can we own?
This loss (defined diversely to say the least) is freeing really
Since if you lose what you love you are free, right?
Free of happy times you really liked, and free of what ... ?
Free to be starting again, perhaps better (as they say, "third time lucky.")
But passing through despair of seeing it go, this loss and gain,
The only good time is when time passes and we begin to forget it ever happened.
Is that the gain loss brings? Forgetting it ever happened, etch-a-sketch-like?
Turn those knobs and shake things around and the tableau renews.
And then here we are building again, only to lose again. And "gain" again
Those wonderful feelings of swishing away the reality we knew for some
New grit in the saddle, or pebble in the shoe. That could be it:
We gain new pain. Life lived is full of that. It has to be, they say.
(I've heard it over and over again.)
08/09/2007 Posted on 08/09/2007 Copyright © 2024 W. Mahlon Purdin
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