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 matter.

                        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.

------Mary Oliver