lines written in the days of growing darkness

Every year we have been

witness to it: how the

world descends

into a rich mash, in order that

it may resume.

And therefore

who would cry out 

to the petals on the ground

to stay,

knowing, as we must,

how the vivacity of what was is married 

to the vitality of what will be?

I don’t say

it’s easy, but

what else will do 

if the love one claims to have for the world

be true?

So let us go on 

though the sun be swinging east,

and the ponds be cold and black,

and the sweets of the year be doomed.

~ Mary Oliver

photo by Eliot Porter