CAJOLE ME TO TAKE ROOT AGAIN
“for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing….
Galway Kinnell, “St. Francis and the Sow”
I’m ready to be taught reflowering—
sprouts, shoots, smells, calls
a syncopated muddle and nowhere
to hide from these beckonings.
My dog snuffs her pawpads, twists around to sniff.
She begins to feel her age—teeth and joints—
but enjoys herself, likes licking herself clean,
nothing of herself is ugly to her, not
smelly gums, furry sphincter, the looser skin
between her legs. She licks and licks,
whatever she can reach.
We take the leash and roam,
a sand road to a back pond,
last year’s acorns sticking upside-down,
caps tossed off, their shells cracked open
and the split halves of meat rotting into soil,
a green fin pokes out and a worm of root
wiggles through the dank.
Each one blind to likelihood, head over heels,
whichever way is up—
