“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 the rest of us will never know.

To live in this world, you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your breast knowing

your own life depends on it and,

when the time comes

to let it go,

to let it go.”

— Mary Oliver, “In Blackwater Woods”