Remembering the three things

To Live in This World

By Mary Oliver

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.


Image by Steven C