In Black Water Woods
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars of light
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon and fulfilment,
the long tapers of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders of the ponds,
and every pond, no matter what it's
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:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
Mary Oliver
