Purity
You promise to teach me a virtue:
the pain and epiphany of letting go.
You let me love in you the joy of jettison,
the delirium of departure,
the way you clean house,
sweeping always with new brooms.
I watch but barely learn your pleasure
in the orderly sort of discontinued items,
your way of committing riddance
with an abandon I know only
in embracing what I have.
The lesson in abdication:
your grace, your easy exit,
slipping my grasp
as simply as a barber shearing locks.
With a falling touch
you show me how to lose
what I cannot think of losing,
belongings too closely held.
For you the worth of connection,
I suppose with all the strength
of everything I have left
(that everything you would leave)
abides in the holy discipline of discard.