{"id":58256,"date":"2017-09-10T06:00:05","date_gmt":"2017-09-10T10:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=58256"},"modified":"2018-11-14T19:18:02","modified_gmt":"2018-11-15T00:18:02","slug":"happy-birthday-mary-oliver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=58256","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday, Mary Oliver"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I have memorized the poem below – not on purpose, just from pure repetition. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

In Blackwater Woods<\/big><\/p>\n

Look, the trees
\nare turning
\ntheir own bodies
\ninto pillars<\/p>\n

of light,
\nare giving off the rich
\nfragrance of cinnamon
\nand fulfillment,<\/p>\n

the long tapers
\nof cattails
\nare bursting and floating away over
\nthe blue shoulders<\/p>\n

of the ponds,
\nand every pond,
\nno matter what its
\nname is, is<\/p>\n

nameless now.
\nEvery year
\neverything
\nI have ever learned<\/p>\n

in my lifetime
\nleads back to this: the fires
\nand the black river of loss
\nwhose other side<\/p>\n

is salvation,
\nwhose meaning
\nnone of us will ever know.
\nTo live in this world<\/p>\n

you must be able
\nto do three things:
\nto love what is mortal;
\nto hold it<\/p>\n

against your bones knowing
\nyour own life depends on it;
\nand, when the time comes to let it go,
\nto let it go.<\/p>\n