The perfect loveliness of sow

Nov. 27, 2003

Dear Adams family,

"The bud stands for all things, even for those things that don't flower," begins Galway Kinnell's poem "St. Francis and the Sow." "... for everything flowers from within, of self-blessing."

DC and I are in Kansas City this Thanksgiving. Our stylish 21-year-old niece, Danica, is cooking dinner for 10 in her one-bedroom apartment. We will laugh and probably sing if my father-in-law has his way. Then we will compliment Danica profusely and toast her table and pray she knows that however it goes is perfect.

Later on downtown we'll watch the turning on of Kansas City's Christmas lights at Country Club Plaza. Bands play, carolers carol. More than 200,000 lights come ablaze all at once. Someone invariably will say "It's quite a sight!"

"though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on the brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing..."

The dogs go to the kennel whenever we leave town. This time DC insisted I be the one to take them. Hank gets too upset if she drops them off, she says. I suspect the one who gets too upset is DC. The dogs won't be particularly happy this Thanksgiving. Happiness has no guarantee.

DC called with news that the mother of one of her co-workers got laid off from her factory job just before the holiday. Their income now consists of her husband's disability check. Their Thanksgiving can't be as bountiful as they'd expected.

We'll just be thankful for what we have, mother told daughter.

All of us should be so wise.

"as Saint Francis

put his hand on the creased forehead

of the sow, and told her in words and in touch

blessings of the 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..."

Fifteen years ago, I was a lost soul taken in by your loving family. At Thanksgiving dinner someone asked me to say a prayer. I didn't know any, so I recited the part of this poem I remembered. It still thanks God for the goodness and beauty of life as well as anything I know.

"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."

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian