Maybe

Sweet Jesus, talking
   his melancholy madness,
      stood up in the boat
         and the sea lay down,

silky and sorry.
   So everybody was saved
      that night
         But you know how it is

when something
   different crosses
      the threshold–the uncles
         mutter together,

the women walk away,
   the young brother begins
      to sharpen his knife.
         Nobody knows what the soul is.

It comes and goes
   like the wind over the water–
      sometimes, for days,
         you don’t think of it.

Maybe, after the sermon,
   after the multitude was fed,
      one or two of them felt
         the soul slip forth

like a tremor of pure sunlight,
   before exhaustion,
      that wants to swallow everything,
         gripped their bones and left them

miserable and sleepy,
   as they are now, forgetting
      how the wind tore at the sails
         before he rose and talked to it–

tender and luminous and demanding
   as he always was–
      a thousand times more frightening
         than the killer sea.

            –Mary Oliver from House of Light