Live Virtual Group Session: 12PM EDT September 30th 2022

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver , posted below. 

Our prompt was: In a few words, name what is difficult to put into words.

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Monday October 3rd at 6 pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.


In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
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

© Back Bay Books, 1983.

8 thoughts on “Live Virtual Group Session: 12PM EDT September 30th 2022

  1. Difficult to put into words~~~

    To live, to live as a member of a community of fellow travelers is complex and bewildering at times.
    There are displays of generosity, of giving of one’s talents to benefit the lives of others, which is an amazing gift.
    To lighten the load, the burden for others is to show compassion to the greatest degree.

    But at the same time, I find it difficult to balance this with its opposition… the darker side of life…
    the pandemics, the wars, the shoving of the downtrodden to the side for self-gratification.

    How can there be these two distinct faces of humanity?
    How do I make sense of this in my heart?
    Or is this simply nonsensical, never to be defined?

    Liked by 2 people

    • al3793

      Michele, there are two sides to the fires and black rivers of life and one side leads to salvation. Your speaker choses that and draws the downtrodden closer. Andre

      Liked by 1 person

  2. Rita B

    Name what is difficult to put into words: by Rita Basuray

    Tony thank you! You gave me my word – because I was drawing a blank. My word today is – Perfection.

    This word means different things to different people and definitely is difficult to define. This means something completely different to a perfectionist (perhaps unattainable) or to a student aiming for a C (clearly attainable).

    Liked by 1 person

  3. al3793

    The fires are gone now
    leaving nothing but black earth and vestiges of tree trunks,
    like charred arms reaching skyward helplessly for help.
    A few words cannot describe the starkness of the desolation.
    Scant patches of green are trying to fill in
    the barren, gray-brown, torched earth.
    The cycle of life depends on this
    heralding a nascent new forest come spring.

    Like

  4. Helen Mia

    “Name what is difficult to put into words..”

    Time is an intangible ephemeral thing
    slipping, sliding and riddling like mercury
    a lucid observation of time evaporating
    the world has fallen away behind her
    the scaffolding has broken

    Nostalgia for what it could have been
    did it all happen?
    It must have as she saw you both in a damp photo
    If only she could turn back time and do it all over again
    This time being in time not paralysed as if she were a guest
    buried inside her diaries

    Now its too late as time has gone
    and she needs some kind of almighty jolt
    to reconcile how past time marks her memories like a traitor
    A discrepancy between then and now
    The pages have been waiting for her ever since
    her pen is leaking…
    As its all too difficult to put into words….

    Liked by 1 person

  5. “In a few words, name what is difficult to put into words.”
    The ache of loneliness.
    The void that appears when someone dies
    The agony of regret
    The abyss of despair
    Crippling anxiety
    Why a relationship ends
    The depths of my love
    The beauty of a sunset over the water

    Liked by 2 people

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