Thursday, April 17, 2014
Condolences to Jennifer and Stewart and family at this time. Phyllis was always so warm-hearted and kind to our mother when she visited Shawville. She liked a game of Scrabble!
In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
iinto pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfilment,
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 come to let it go,
to let it go.
Thinking of cousin Phyllis with love, Christine Smart
