Loss

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.
~Mary Oliver, from “In Blackwater Woods”

I have sent this poem (again) to someone who is bereaved. What difficult human work Oliver describes! In an earlier entry on love and loss (click “loss” on the tag cloud at right), I quoted a Shakespeare passage that I think of often: “Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate– / That Time will come and take my Love away: / –This thought is as a death, which cannot choose / But weep to have that which it fears to lose.”

Still, Oliver is right. We must love because our lives depend upon it, and we must let go when that time comes. I believe the more fully we can do Oliver’s three things, the richer life will be. How we do it, I can’t say, but I know it’s worthwhile to keep trying.

 (The entire poem is beautiful, and perhaps Oliver is annoyed that only the most powerful, conclusive lines are so often reprinted. I recommend reading it if you haven’t.)