Maybe
by Mary Oliver As I was searching for poems for a memorial service, I looked through some poems by Mary Oliver, a woman I usually take to be a Buddhist poet though I have no evidence other than the way her words land in my heart, and found this gem which I want to share. 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, for