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, cheerfully enough,
this and every crisping day,
though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.
Notes
After Mahon’s quiet insistence that everything will somehow be all right, Mary Oliver turns toward the darker half of the year and simply watches what happens. The leaves fall, the days shorten, and the world begins to empty itself without asking to be saved. Maybe our discomfort with endings comes from wanting life to hold its shape forever, while nature keeps showing us something simpler. Losing, changing, and beginning again have always belonged to the same cycle. October finds its rhythm here. The trees grow bare, the light disappears earlier each evening, and there is still something beautiful about a world that knows how to let things go. #October #MaryOliver #Decay #Nature #Poetry