Mary Oliver: In Blackwater Woods

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In Blackwater Woods

Mary Oliver, Mary Oliver poetry, Secular or Eclectic, Secular or Eclectic poetry, poetry, [TRADITION SUB2] poetry, poetry

by Mary Oliver
(1935 - ) Timeline

Original Language
English

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.
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.

-- from American Primitive, by Mary Oliver

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/ Photo by obenson /

Themes

Bower

Light

Lover and Beloved

Tree

Water

Recommended Books

	American Primitive, by Mary Oliver
	Blue Iris: Poems and Essays, by Mary Oliver
	Blue Pastures, by Mary Oliver
	Dream Work, by Mary Oliver
	God of Dirt: Mary Oliver and the Other Book of God, by Thomas W. Mann

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This is one of my favorite poems by Mary Oliver. It speaks to so many levels of the human experience.

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light...

Those opening lines draw me in every time I read them. They remind me that nature, too, is a heavenly realm. But there is also the beginning hint of loss here, something evanescent and fleeting. It as if these trees, in their glow, are fading from the physical world, receding from us. It is a lovely, melancholy sort of transcendence.

Lines in this poem also suggest to me, at times, formless awareness:

and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.

Notice the intentional ambiguity of that final line break above. She could be saying that the ponds are now nameless, or that they are nameless Now, nameless Presence. Contemplating that double meaning can throw the mind into meditation.

She uses a similar line break immediately preceding that: "name is, is". The break forces us unconsciously to think of how no matter what a place (or person) is named, it IS. It's existence is undeniable, not somehow dependent on definitions or categories or names. The line break tricks the mind into contemplating the relationship between being and name.

But the part of the poem that touches me most is the courageous willingness to embrace both connection and 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.

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