Love Poem for Monday

Self love, the most difficult love affair to have, seems to be where all love needs to begin. But we run so fast from it. Galway Kinnell's poem, St Francis and The Sow softens me to the idea every time I read it. Wouldn't it be remarkable if we didn't need to reteach ourselves our loveliness? Photo from one of the best journeys to self love ever made, Babe.
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