I have memorized the poem below – not on purpose, just from pure repetition.
Dad was not familiar with her work and so one day I recited the poem for him. In the last 2 stanzas, I heard him exhale – a whoosh of breath – and he said, “Boy, that’s a great poem.” If you knew Dad, you know that’s a big deal. He was a deeply emotional man, but he tried to keep it in check. When he felt something, though, it was obvious in a 10-mile radius.
Years later, when we buried his ashes in a small fragile grieving group … we each said something beforehand. Memories or thoughts. I read this poem. The connective tissue between reciting it for him and then reading it out loud in the vast absence he left behind was so strong I thought I might not be able to get through it. I also had no idea when I first recited it to him that it would end up being about my own feelings of loss when he left us.
In Blackwater Woods
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.
Whoa…
Kate – I know, right?
That’s what ……. I got out of it.
Wow.
Right in the pit of my stomach.
DBW – I know. That really is ALL that it is about. Ugh.
That really is goosebump inducing.
Desirae – I know. I love the structure of the poem – you can just feel it moving towards that huge close.
So startling and TRUE.
On another note — and something I’m surprised to say — I may have finally been sold on reading Moby Dick from that little excerpt you posted. I LOVE that.
Tracey – you, of all people, will FLIP YOUR LID about Moby Dick.
Just read ‘Wage Peace’ this morning and now this one. So deep and true. And I love how you compare her to Melville who never really leaves me, I was just telling someone yesterday about the opening lines in Moby Dick when he writes about when it’s a dreary November in my soul and feeling like knocking people’s hats off in the street and following funeral processions and that it’s time to get to sea, all that, I say, for me it’s time for me to get on stage again, and he said, “what book is that again?!” I got to read it!”
Ha! You know, I keep saying to myself I have to read Moby Dick again. I’ve only read it twice so far. But boy oh boy, one of the greatest of all time.
Thank you.
(No one has ever made me cry in my coffee like you make me cry in my coffee.)
Ha. I know – sorry! she makes me cry too!
Love her stuff. Am on vestry at St. James in Keene and every meeting begins with a meditation, or prayer, or reading and I always choose something of hers. She always affects people somehow, in some way. Amazing. Thanks for this. And MOBY DICK. So much to read, so little time. Can I really tackle reading it again? Oh my. I’ll let you know, okay?
Sheila Oh Yes. Mary Oliver. I’m just astounded every time I read her.
And this poem, she really gets to how this feels
Last April at my daughter’s wedding part of what read for her was the last two paragraphs of this poem, To live in this world…
Hi, Sheila- I just want to say thank you for this post. I have read Oliver before, but somehow did not remember this poem. So simple, so powerful.
We lost my dad this summer, after a grueling month-long hospital stay, and held his memorial this weekend. So, wandering onto your site yesterday and reading this–I can’t tell you what it meant, but somehow it helped. Like listening to Waylon helped. Like thinking about Bobby Singer helped. Like breaking down to Glen Hansard’s “This Gift” helped. Like checking in aimlessly and finding this poem, helped. Thank you.
Barb – I am so sorry for your loss. My deepest condolences. The pain changes, but it never really goes away. It took me years to even be able to mention my Dad in the past tense. :(
I am so glad I decided to put up this poem then, and to share the little history with my Dad and that poem. I am so glad it helped.
God bless Mary Oliver, and Waylon and Bobby Singer. What a trifecta!
Take care. I’m so sorry.
Take what you need, I guess– Thank you so much, Sheila.
Oh, wow. What a powerful poem – those last few stanzas took my breath away. And what an amazing tribute to your dad.
No matter how many times I read it, the ending still shocks me. I’m never prepared for it. It emerges out of pure description – trees and cattails and ponds … and then boom, she whips the curtain back. She’s amazing at that – but this one is really special.
I’m glad I shared it with my father. He loved poetry but mostly older stuff. He got frustrated with new poetry. You never knew what he might like. I’m so glad he liked this one.
Love her, love her, love her.
Isn’t she just amazing?