Next week my oldest heads to Nepal and Australia for a year, one of his sisters heads back to college for her senior year, and the other to college for her freshman year. All of them far, far away. I spent many hours this week going through giant saggy cardboard boxes filled with mementos from their childhoods, artwork and papers and ribbons and letters, focusing on how funny and sweet and sometimes startling they were. And giant waves of sadness and disbelief that they are no longer little keep washing through me. “What isn’t given to love, is so much wasted.” You just have to throw yourself into it all and keep right on throwing yourself into it, I guess.
walking as fast as you can, but getting nowhere,
arms and legs pumping, sweat drizzling in rivulets;
each year, a little slower, more creaks and aches, less breath.
Ah, but these soft nights, air like a warm bath, the dusky wings
of bats careening crazily overhead, and you’d think the road
goes on forever. Apollinaire wrote, “What isn’t given to love
is so much wasted,” and I wonder what I haven’t given yet.
A thin comma moon rises orange, a skinny slice of melon,
so delicious I could drown in its sweetness. Or eat the whole
thing, down to the rind. Always, this hunger for more.
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Alison McGhee 
That line is so beautiful – “What isn’t given to love is so much wasted” . Writing that down now. 🙂 great poem!
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