Deepening Oneness with  Earth and the Divine

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