To live in this world

A friend emailed last night to invite me to a reading by Mary Oliver, and immediately I thought of these lines that I love, these lines that arrived in one of the very first cards after Henry died: 

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 , "In Blackwater Woods"

                   You can read the whole poem here.