On this Valentine’s Day, I would
simply offer up this poem that reminds us that we are all lovely and loveable.
St. Francis and the Sow
Galway Kinnell
The bud
stands for all things,
even for 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 Saint 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 sheer 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.
