“In Blackwater Woods”

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.

“No Voyage”

O, I go to see the great ships ride from harbor,

And my wounds leap with impatience; yet I turn back

To sort the weeping ruins of my house:

Here or nowhere I will make peace with the fact.

“The Uses of Sorrow”

Someone I loved once gave me

a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand

that this, too, was a gift.

“The Veil”

There are moments when the veil seems

almost to lift, and we understand what

the earth is meant to mean to us — the

trees in their docility, the hills in

their patience, the flowers and the

vines in their wild, sweet vitality.

Then the Word is within us, and the

Book is put away.