Follow Love - Tribute to Nissa the Adorable


It’s always near. Love is breath
a fragrant breeze from a body
turning toward you with a need
for the touch of your hand.
A scent of longing for you
to offer a cup of food and your
longing for the grateful gaze.

Follow love. Let it wash death away.

Even now I feel the puppy’s paws
prance on my thigh, telling me
to wake up and follow her
downstairs to the empty bowl
and fill it, then she fills my face
with quick, light kisses.

I followed love into years of joyful service,

As a mother. She became my daughter.
God spelled backwards, as my mother liked to say.
Day after day, I felt the whole rolling ball
of Earth whirl around her
as I stroked the silken hair, feeling ribs
and spine and belly’s tautness,
the hard haunch muscles. As I trotted with her
down the street, the earth loved her
in animal scents and soft dirt, in seed pods
that clung to her as if to sprout
in that platinum hair. Like Flora, she danced
up the road and back, a silver sprite.

I followed love and fell in
plunging in.
Love is bottomless
even when its object disappears
into birth's interiority, the cave
that rolls time backwards.


Rachel Dacus
4-22-13