Sunday, March 8, 2009

A Little Poem About The Beauty In All Things

St. Francis And The Sow
The bud
stands for all things
even those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as St. Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking
and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

-Galway Kinnell

7 comments:

Busy Bee Suz said...

very purdy indeed.
SUZ.

HWHL said...

I thought so too, Suz.... and I must say, I've never considered a sow to have inner beauty.... but I will look at her differently from now on. :)

Laurie Brandriet Keller said...

That's so sweet! I love piglets! And that is too cool that we both wrote about St. Francis today : )

HWHL said...

Laurie - when I visit my brother in Minneapolis - I always try to come up so my visit coincides with the MN State Fair (call me a dork, but I LOVE LOVE LOVE the MN State Fair)... and I love seeing the little baby piglets.... always reminds me of Wilbur from "Charlotte's Web"!

I'll have to do a post about the MN State Fair sometime... it really is just a magical, folksy place! (This Georgia girl has been THREE different years!)

Unknown said...

Sweet.

Gberger said...

That's beautiful.

Michele said...

It's a beautiful poem... I'm glad to have read this.
Thank you.

hug♥