The vital force of life is charged by the poles of holding on and letting go. We know that the price of love is loss, and yet we love anyway; that our atoms will one day belong to generations of other living creatures who too will die in turn, and yet we press them hard against the body of the world, against each other’s bodies, against the canvas and the keyboard and the cambium of life. This is the cruel contract of all experience, of aliveness itself — that in order to have it, we must agree to let it go. Poet Jane Kenyon (May 23, 1947–April 22, 1995) offers a splendid consolation for signing it in her poem “Things,” found in her altogether soul-slaking Collected Poems (public library).THINGSby Jane KenyonThe hen flings a single pebble asidewith her yellow, reptilian foot.Never in eternity the same sound —a small stone falling on a red leaf.The juncture of twig and branch,scarred with lichen, is a gatewe might enter, singing.The mouse pulls battingfrom a hundred-year-old quilt.She chewed a hole in a blue starto get it, and now she thrives….Now is her time to thrive.Things: simply lasting, thenfailing to last: water, a blue heron’seye, and the light passingbetween them: into light all thingsmust fall, glad at last to have fallen.Shortly before leukemia claimed her life at only forty-seven, Kenyon captured the miraculousness of the light having passed through us at all — which contours the luckiness of death — in a haunting poem that puts any complaint, any lament, any argument with life into perspective: OTHERWISEby Jane KenyonI got out of bedon two strong legs.It might have beenotherwise. I atecereal, sweetmilk, ripe, flawlesspeach. It mighthave been otherwise.I took the dog uphillto the birch wood.All morning I didthe work I love.At noon I lay downwith my mate. It mighthave been otherwise.We ate dinner togetherat a table with silvercandlesticks. It mighthave been otherwise.I slept in a bedin a room with paintingson the walls, andplanned another dayjust like this day.But one day, I know,it will be otherwise.Couple with Kenyon’s immortal advice on writing and life, then revisit poet Donald Hall — her mate — on the secret of lasting love and Pico Iyer on finding beauty in impermanence and luminosity in loss. donating = lovingFor seventeen years, I have been spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars each month composing The Marginalian (which bore the outgrown name Brain Pickings for its first fifteen years). It has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, no assistant — a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor makes your own life more livable in any way, please consider lending a helping hand with a donation. Your support makes all the difference.newsletterThe Marginalian has a free weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s most inspiring reading. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.