pafret Loc: Northeast

The Poet: Mary Oliver, "In Blackwater Woods"
"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:
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