In Blackwater Woods

This poem immediately stood out to me when I read it the first time a few weeks ago, but it wasn’t the right time to write about it until now. It is beautifully profound and one of those things that I could write about multiple times, because I get a new appreciation for it each time I read it. I love how it lists off some of nature’s most beautiful things and then comes to the conclusion that in the end it doesn’t matter what they are:
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.
Because in the end, everything we learn and everything we see leads back to salvation, as mentioned later in the poem. We will never know the meaning of salvation, but it combats “the fires and the black river of loss” and delivers us from pain. All the beautiful things in life that we see and think and live help to ease the pain of our everyday burdens. The last part of the poem is as follows:
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.
This really speaks to me because it reminds me that all things come to an end, and that isn’t always a bad thing. We have to “love what is mortal”, and I take this to mean our family, friends, pets, and anything else we hold close to our hearts that has no spiritual implication. We hold them in our hearts, knowing that without them we would be nowhere, but there is always a time for goodbyes. Everything has its season. To live, we must know and believe this.