Halsted M. Bernard

Years ago, dur­ing a period of griev­ing, I sent this excerpt from Mary Oliver’s poem “In Black­wa­ter Woods” to my father:
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.
Another period of …