start your fire

I've mentioned before that I'm not a huge fan of poetry; however, the other day I was doing my usual blog surfing (as I do), and I came across the following on the lovely blog Creating Wings, excerpted from Tony Hoagland's poem, "Grammar." Since it pretty much speaks directly to naming and claiming your own beautiful Different, there was no way I wasn't going to share it with you:

…when she walks into the room,
everybody turns:

some kind of light is coming from her head.
Even the geraniums look curious,
and the bees, if they were here, would buzz
suspiciously around her hair, looking
for the door in her corona.
We're all attracted to the perfume
of fermenting joy,

we've all tried to start a fire,
and one day maybe it will blaze up on its own.
In the meantime, she is the one today among us
most able to bear the idea of her own beauty,
and when we see it, what we do is natural:
we take our burned hands
out of our pockets,
and clap.