In Blackwater Woods

Look, the trees are falling! The trees, their leaves, are twisting, tumbling, finding rest in the cool, dark earth. They are asking, “Where is our place?” And in this falling, there is the asking of everything, silenced in the delightful dance of life. Can you hear the whispers of rain that bed down hard against the bright earth, a marrow-deep song from old roots, a rain that whispers through sorrow, through everything that has passed? The way of the trees will hold you, if you let it, as you breathe your last breath, if you do not resist the tuning of your soul, the carrying across, where pain meets air, every whisper of rain, every sigh of the night.

• Mary Oliver