About Love and What it Means to Follow it

Who I thought I was
was Daisy Duke
leaping from the hay loft, climbing
trees and fences, exploring the
no boundaries
of corn field
after corn field
after hay pasture
in cut-off jean shorts and
tied up
t-shirt covering
the first buds of adolescence, belly button
displayed. Who I really was
was Gaia

Mother Earth, birth-giver
to the universe. Television
didn't tell me that. Instead I heard it
in Spring when the farmhouse windows
let in bird sound and soft swish
of breeze in new leafed trees
and smell of last year's manure that lay
the fertile ground for seeds and sprouts
and the growing up
of earth's abundance around us. Punishment
I felt in the sting of running through rows
of high corn stalks in lost confusion where I learned
the paradox of Earth's beauty
and unkindness. We are here to understand

the sweet spot
of acceptance. And go running
through it.