nursing the world
Written in response to “Saint Francis and the Sow” by Galway Kinnell, which you can read here or listen to Galway read here. Inspired by a prompt from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s Loving the Self: A Poetry Playshop.
Galway Kinnell tells me
how to press a palm
to a flower’s brow
until its cellulose walls
feel, through the warmth of that kind, gentle hand,
the radiant energy of that soft, undemanding touch,
the truth of the flower’s self-realized loveliness.
Oh, Galway, and Saint Francis,
and yes, the flower’s green leaf,
and the sow’s muddy hoof,
press yourself to my temple
until this blessing sings through my limp limbs
so I might do the same.
All anyone wants
is to be enough.
To have warranted the atoms they’re made of.
To have patiently pressed their palm
to another needy being’s brow
and then watched them shine with joy.
