Poetry Collection Crisis

Okay, maybe I overshot with "crisis." More like "conundrum." I bookmark poems that I discover online in two ways: I tag them in my Google RSS Reader and, more frequently, I use the social bookmarking site Delicious. Delicious has long been one of my favorite Web 2.0 resources. I think it's brilliant and it's possible that I use it more than any non-Gmail site on the web.

Well, it seems Delicious is on the verge of shutting down and there's no word on whether my 1,500+ bookmarks that range from poems to teaching sites to resource compendiums to Edmonton Oiler blogs will be preserved. Luckily there's another site, Diigo, that offers many of the same things. And it seems like the transition will be secure and easy.

The art of losing, even the trivial things, is certainly not hard to master, but it's rarely fun. So in the spirit of the possible loss of Delicious and my love of List poems and the Monday Poetry Stretch posted at The Miss Rumphius Effect, here's a first draft of a little list poem on Losing.

I Have Lost

That mix tape you made me.

So many pens it's not funny.

My patience way too often.

I blame genetics,
grandfather; your temper 
was legendary.

My grandfather.

A friend or two.

My ability to ignore your absence.

Track of time again.

My memory of adult life without
children. (No need for it.)

Control of this poem.

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A nod to Word Playgrounds author John O'Connor on this one. I think he features Loss Poems in his wonderful book.