Flowering

AC gave me a wonderful new poetry book for Valentine's day, Ten Poems to Open Your Heart. I found this gem in it this morning, and it brightened my day and touched my heart, so I thought I would share it with you too.

Saint Francis and the Sow
by Galway Kinnell

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, or self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on the 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 Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of the 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.

In the commentary section of the book Housden says "we too are buds, you and I, full of a life unfolding into flower... The flower of our life is already in bud even now, precisely in our present circumstances. "
Whatever your circumstances today, let this poem be the "hand upon your brow" reminding you of your loveliness just as you are.