Is the soul solid, like iron?
Or is it tender and breakable, like
the wings of a moth in the beak of an owl?
Who has it, and who doesn't?
I keep looking around me.
The face of the moose is as sad
as the face of Jesus.
The swan opens her white wings slowly.
In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.
One question leads to another.
Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg?
Like the eye of a hummingbird?
Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?
Why should I have it, and not the anteater
who loves her children?
Why should I have it, and not the camel?
Come to think of it, what about maple trees?
What about the blue iris?
What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?
What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?
What about the grass?
In between loads of laundry I've been reading a lot today, looking for poems to use in tomorrow's program on The Spirituality of Poetry that I'll be leading at Cathedral Crossroads. This is one I had bookmarked and as I haven't celebrated Mary Oliver Monday in several weeks, I decided to post it as today's offering.
Lately I've been skirting around the edges of articles and books that deal with the science of consciousness. Some of these talk about the idea of the soul and look to answer questions like the one Mary Oliver raises. Who has one? Can it be measured? What's it made of? Where does it reside? All that theorizing fascinates me but the question that I am most often ask in relation to the subject is the one I pose today: How goes it with your soul?
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