the bud stands for all things

  

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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 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
Saint Francis And The Sow

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