Poem by Mary Oliver

Poem 

by Mary Oliver

The spirit 

likes to dress up like this: 

ten fingers, 

ten toes,

shoulders, and all the rest 

at night 

in the black branches 

in the morning

in the blue branches 

of the world. 

It could float, of course, 

but would rather

plumb rough mattter. 

Airy and shapeless thing, 

it needs 

the metaphor of the body,

lime and appetite, 

the oceanic fluids; 

it needs the body's world, 

instinct

and imagination 

and the dark hug of time 

sweetness 

and tangibility

to be understood, 

to be more than pure light 

that burns 

where no one is --

so it enters us -- 

in the morning 

shines from brute comfort 

like a stitch of lightning;

and at night 

lights up the deep and wondrous 

drownings of the body 

like a star.

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