Blackwater Woods
by Mary Oliver
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 Jane Oliver ~ b. September 1935 – d. January 2019 was an Pulitzer Prize winning American poet who has been compared to Emily Dickinson. Her nature inspired work was influenced by Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau.