This isn't a playground

I couldn't help but find this bit of graffiti at Fort Worden amusing.  But really, there's no way to lessen the impact of death and loss except by walking through it -- which Mary Oliver does beautifully with the poems in her book, Thirst. 

Here's one of those poems, called "A Pretty Song":

From the complications of loving you
I think there is no end or return.
No answer, no coming out of it.

Which is the only way to love, isn't it?
This isn't a playground, this is
earth, our heaven, for a while.

 Therefore I have given precedence
to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods
that hold you in the center of my world.

And I say to my body: grow thinner still.
And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song.
And I say to my heart: rave on.