A collaboration between the Joseph Campbell Foundation, OPUS Archives, and Pacifica Graduate Institute. Join the conversation, create the vision, deepen the study of myth.
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.
---Mary Oliver
Happy Autumn.
