Suddenly, I realize
that if I stepped out
of my body
I would break
into blossom
***
James Wright,
From “A Blessing”
When I was looking for inspiration for Monday’s Beautiful You post, I was reminded of an excerpt of a poem I use in my Body Image Seminar. I find these lines so simple and yet powerful: If I stepped out of my body, I would break into blossom. Indeed, being consumed by our bodies is a guaranteed way to weigh ourselves down in this world, to keep ourselves from realizing our best selves. It is a distracting force, a force that takes away from our power, our truth, our ability, our passion. My students always nod in recognition when I share these lines from Wright’s A Blessing with them.
It’s been a long time since I’ve read A Blessing by Wright and so I decided today to revisit it, to remember what the entire poem addresses. As a quick aside (but not really an aside at all), I should tell you that over the last few years, I’ve really come to love watching the horse races that make up the Triple Crown. BF and I make it a point to not read a thing at all The Kentucky Derby before the day of and then we sit down with the list of contenders to choose who we are pulling for based on their names or some other small detail. Last year, I choose Eight Belles because she was the only female in the race. BF choose Big Brown because he had a couch he loved during his bachelor days (and for about five years of our marriage) that he had named Big Brown. Well, Big Brown won and Eight Belles came in second. I was thrilled and ran off to shower. BF came into the bathroom a few minutes later to tell me that Eight Belles had stumbled after her finish and had to be put down on the track. I cried in the shower. This year, I chose Pioneer of the Nile (the Africa connection) for the Derby. I can’t remember BF’s choice because it was overshadowed by Mine that Bird’s amazing win. For the Preakness, though, I couldn’t help but pull for the only girl in the line-up, Rachel Alexandra, especially with all that talk of Fillies should race with Fillies and Colts with Colts (who knew that horse racing needed a good ole’ dose of girl power). Sure enough, girl power arrived in the horse racing world in the form of Rachel Alexandra. That feel good story was still on my mind as I went surfing for James Wright’s A Blessing, only to be reminded that the poem itself features a beautiful black and white pony who the speaker admires. All the more reason for those final words of the poem to be the one’s I share with you today. Go out and break into blossom!
