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.

"In Blackwater Woods" by Mary Oliver, from American Primitive. © Back Bay Books, 1983.

Comment: I've never read anything by Mary Oliver but I want to get to know her better. Her name keeps popping up. Her poems are often cited at our Sunday UU services. Then I was reading a column in a local magazine here by a Baptist minister who talked at length about the meaning of two of her poems. Now if a poet inspires and is cited by both a UU minister and a Baptist minister...you can't help but be curious. "In Blackwater Woods" was one of the poems the Baptist minister referred to. It's the last two stanzas that really grab you. And in terms of truth, I feel she pretty much sums it up. The things we love the most in life are mortal. We must hold on to them dearly while we can, but with the knowledge that the people we love can't stay with us forever nor can we can stay with them forever. It's so painful, but it's one of the few truths we have.