In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver

In this poem, Oliver spends the first five stanzas describing the beauty of a forest: “Giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment, the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders.” She then goes on to talk about fires which leads me to believe the antecedent scenario was a forest fire that destroyed the woods. She makes the point that humans will never know the true meaning of salvation because we can’t save everything from harm, including forests. 

In stanzas eight and nine, Oliver describes what humans can do to make up for not knowing salvation. “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.” The last task she states humans must be able to do to live in this world has a strong impact over the entirety of the poem. Throughout it, you feel the sense as though she loved the forest very much, but when it was destroyed, it was a terrible loss. In order to recover from the loss, you need “to let it go.”