2025 Summer Holidays - Final Out of Office Poem
Andrew Treloar,
The Art of Leaving
With apologies to Elizabeth Bishop
and
her poem One Art
The art of leaving isn't hard to master;
So many tasks seem filled with the intent
To be left that their leaving's no disaster.
Leave something every day. Accept the fluster
of your colleagues, their request to relent.
The art of leaving isn't hard to master.
Then practice leaving further, leaving faster:
committees, mailing lists and where it was you spent
that last retreat. It will be no disaster.
I left my favourite role. And look! my favourite
and most valued colleagues went.
The art of leaving isn't hard to master.
I left two networks, valued ones, and vaster
clouds of experts, infrastructures to augment.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
Even leaving a part of who I am, my expertise,
my vanity, my ambition now spent;
The art of leaving's not too hard to master...
Though it may look (at first!) like a disaster.