There I was, one morning trying to find the perfect poem to get my students to understand what I meant when I said that their poems were innocent and that they didn't need to mash them into pulp with all of their learned judgments. And then I found this amazing piece by Linda Hogan:
Innocence
There is nothing more innocent
than the still-unformed creature I find beneath soil,
neither of us knowing what it will become
in the abundance of the planet.
It makes a living only by remaining still
in its niche.
One day it may struggle out of its tender
pearl of blind skin
with a wing or with vision
leaving behind the transparent.
I cover it again, keep laboring,
hands in earth, myself a singular body.
Watching things grow,
wondering how
a cut blade of grass knows
how to turn sharp again at the end.
This same growing must be myself,
not aware yet of what I will become
in my own fullness
inside this simple flesh.
