In Blackwater Woods
Work That is Not My Own
Again, more work I have run across in relation to Duke. This one is for a friend who will likely never see it.
Who doesn’t love Mary Oliver? I heard a story recently that she once carried around a dead pigeon in her pocket as she walked around Chicago. And though that little bit of information is whimsical, this poem is less so. Enjoy it, nonetheless. Blessings, friends.
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.