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In Blackwater Woods
Look, the trees are turning
their own bodies into pillars of light,
are giving off the rich fragrance
of cinnamon and fulfillment,
the long tapers of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders of the ponds,
and every pond no matter
what its name is, is nameless now.
Every year everything
I have ever learned in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side is salvation,
whose meaning none of us
will ever know.
To live in this world
you must be able to do three things:
love what is mortal;
to hold it against your bones knowing
your life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
To let it go.
Mary Oliver |
