Poem: The Spirit Likes To Dress Up by Mary Oliver

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

   drownings of the body

     like a star.

 

- Mary Oliver