In Blackwater Woods (an excerpt)

Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
at the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in the 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