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.