Poem (the spirit likes to dress up)
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
   like a star.
~ Mary Oliver
