In Blackwater Woods
by Mary Oliver #poetry

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.

"No longer a middle way, centrism has become ossified as an independent body of dogma, every bit as ideologically inflexible as its apparent rivals. Or perhaps "dogma" is the wrong word: what unites the political center, after all, is not so much a commitment to a set of identifiable political beliefs, as to an identifiable aesthetic – a dedication to politicians, or political institutions, who favor a certain neat look, a certain technocratic affect, a certain starry-eyed, Obamaesque rhetorical tone."

"The center has been radicalized – and this means that centrist politicians and social media accounts are becoming an increasingly severe disinformation threat. They might typically retain a sensible tone – but this should by no means assure anyone that they are conveying sensible content."

https://www.logically.ai/articles/the-center-cannot-hold