After the Explosion in the Boiler

If bare atmosphere alone
Could sustain a personhood,
Without flesh, without a brain,

One could imagine the soul
As someone on a freighter
Flung from the ship as it sinks,

Then surfacing in the waves
To find that all that remains
Are chunks of floating wreckage.

The soul treads water a while
Beside what’s left of its life,
And then is either rescued

Or succumbs to exhaustion
And vanishes in the waves
That floated it for a while.