IN BLACKWATER WOODS
By Mary Oliver
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.
