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.