Found in Willow Springs 83
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. . . Saint Francis / put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch / blessings of earth
-Galway Kinnell, “St. Francis and the Sow”
The ‘Hog Apocalypse' may finally be on the horizon.
-Texas Department of Agriculture, Commissioner Sid Miller
I wasn’t bothered by the hogs. In fact,
I welcomed the pack of them foraging in nearby brush,
an antidote to my loneliness.
At the Hill Country cabin, my companion was the voice
of the radio newscaster I’d listen to afternoons in the parked car,
doors flung open to the country breeze, to hogs
dotting the landscape. Sid Miller is not the only one
who’d call me a fool. If he has his way, farmers
will lure swine with poison feed so they slowly, painfully
bleed as their innards bubble up blue. I know
the hogs cause damage; they scrape land bare,
burrow holes deep and wide enough to hold a sleeping
man. Wasn’t it enough to encourage hunters in helicopters
to shoot from the sky? What if St. Francis
put his hand on the hairy forehead
of one of these sows? Or the creased, wide, shiny
forehead of Sid? If the blessings of the earth
were spoken into us, and we began remembering
through our own thick length,
from the top of our heads through our tired hearts,
what would we find? The problem of the pigs
began on a boat. The colonizer
told the wild hog the loveliness of taking,
of digging into the dirt with her snout, rooting up
all she wants. And the sow remembered
through her own heart about hunger. Her appetite
streamed into fourteen mouths sucking at her teats,
into writhing bodies she would nudge off, snorting
go now, eat. Run in a pack and trample
what you please. Eat every flowering thing.
