Wait without thought, Part 2
December 7, 2016
Love everything that gets in your way
December 9, 2016
I keep a Saint Francis statue in my studio. He watches over me as I work, and reminds me to go outside from time to time, and say hello to all the creatures of the woods. I have all kinds of animal friends that I see regularly: the owl, the deer, the porcupine, the coyote, the blue heron, the geese, and dozens of different types of birds.I can feel this poem (emphasis is mine) in my own body, like a body scan in meditation. Try it. And remember your loveliness.
Saint Francis and the Sow
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.
Galway Kinnell, from Three Books. 2002
Today’s Assignment:
1. Create a collage that tells a story. Use as image as your protagonist and give it an environment.
