Making space

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop from The Complete Poems:  1927-1979 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day.
Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Lent, to me, is a time to make space, space in which I can be more keenly aware of the presence of the holy.  I can create it by letting go of stuff that's taking up space-- extraneous possessions, emotional baggage, not helpful habits.  Or, I can create space by adding to my life-- more silence, more reflection, more poetry.  Either way, it's my intention that makes the space.

Elizabeth Bishop's poem got me thinking about space that is created through no action of my own.  What have I lost?  What do I fear I will lose?  And how can space created through loss be transformed from absence to presence?