How can you help but love a woman…

who wears her wedding dress,

out to the pasture, to shovel hay and manure?

Is she the morning mist, a fallen cloud,

an image sent by the cherubs to quiet my heart?

Where can you find a farmer’s wife,

who wears $200 French imported green boots,

she bought for $8 at a consignment shop, to do her chores?

Did I conjure her up?

Search for her on match.com?

Sail to the far corners of the earth to find  her?

How can you help but love an artist,

who practices her art every minute of every day?

In love and work, clothes and laundry,

in the kitchen and living room,

in the car and in the kitchen. in her imagination,

in her dreams.

Where do you find such a woman,

to love, did you find her in a little blue bottle,

ask the genie to grant  your wish?,

ask your fairy to wave her wand and

spin her out of yarn?

And how can you help but love such a woman,

who saved a lonely and broken man,

and pulled him back from the abyss.

How can you not

give thanks every morning that she is there,

and real to the touch, not a vision,

but flesh and blood.

Sssssssh, come closer, good friend,

and I will tell you a secret. Rejoice with me.

You can only find such a woman in a barn,

at the edge of the earth,

in the mystical space between light and dark,

in a place where angels hitch rides up to heaven,

and the cows take their secrets to the grave.