St. Francis And The Sow
Galway Kinnell
The bud
stands for all things,
even 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 St. 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 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.
There are precious few pictures of me from my middle school years. Those were the years that I tried so hard to be invisible. Given the choice to walk around in a cardboard box without having to communicate with anyone or anything, I would probably have taken it. But I found this one. It was taken at a wedding, I think, the summer before 7th grade. I love that kid...her shy, reluctant smile, her gentleness, her sensitivity. I wish I could tell her that. I wish she would have believed it.
I was somehow coerced into being a judge for a middle school voice competition tonight. It was so painful. The singing was pretty dismal, of course, but that wasn't why it was so excruciating. Middle schoolers just make me cringe, the girls in particular. It just hurts me to watch them trying so hard, to see what they do to themselves to stake their claim in the madhouse of adolescence. I remember the way I tried so hard and the things I did.
I stuck out at Liberty Middle like a sore thumb. If it wasn't for the generally effective social regulator built into my personality, I would have been swallowed up. I knew how to fit in just enough so that people didn't seem to mind that I was seriously strange. I made straight As without even trying and all my teachers loved me to an embarrassing degree. Well, I take that back. I had an English teacher in 6th grade who just couldn't stand me. She tried so hard to give me a B. While my peers were passing love notes and playing with their Gigapets (remember those?), I would read novels under my desk while the teacher tried to maintain order. I only really got into trouble when I was just overcome with boredom and decided to see what the other kids were amusing themselves with.
I played basketball which helped, so there were always about 15 other girls who, if for nothing else, appreciated me for my height and awkward but accurate jump shot. I also played tennis for the high school from the time I was in 6th grade and played number 1 seed, singles and doubles (which isn't saying much at all...most Liberty-ites could care less about tennis, much less encourage their kids to). So I had an "in" with the high school crowd, which I think made me more "in" with the middle school crowd. And I had musical and artistic talent that was recognized and somewhat appreciated by my fellow inmates. All in all, I should have had a relatively easy go of it, if there can be such a thing in middle school.
Looking back, Liberty Middle School should have been more aptly named Liberty Self-Hatred Preparatory School. I know it is where I honed my own distinguished self-loathing skills. I like to think I've moved on and replaced such ideas, despite having such superior training, but I'm not sure any of us ever fully recovery from our middle school trauma. But it's nice to know that not only were we never really alone in our misery, but that misery at 13 is mandatory. The problem is, when you are 13, you can't fully decipher the misery from the pretense. When you are a miserable 13yo, you think everyone else is having a fuckin' blast! In reality, everyone else is just as miserable and are hoping to God (as you are) that no one can tell.
This poem always makes me think of the process of post-middle school redemption. If we are so lucky, the people who love us try to reteach us our loveliness, reassure us of our worth. Unfortunately, some don't get that secondary education--way too many. And those of us, the lucky ones, who do receive it are forever hesitant to believe it, even if we really want to. Under the praise and appreciation of others, we still must learn to bless ourselves, love the great broken heart, know ourselves beloved. If we can do that, even a little, maybe we can call ourselves redeemed.
