Monday, November 3, 2014

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

xo

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