A Poet Reflects

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;

—Galway Kinnell, opening lines to “Saint Francis and the Sow” from Mortal Acts, Mortal Words (Houghton Mifflin, 1980)