It’s foaling season in Kentucky.
As I make my way down the road
I pass field after field, fence after fence,
and say to my husband:

Can you believe there are people who don’t see horses every day?

On my drive to work,
I pass no less than four different horse farms;
each with its sprawling acreage,
its soft rolling hills, its pastures rich with grass,
perfectly manicured by the constant
grazing of these lovely beasts.
My husband turns to me and says:

Can you believe that you don’t see cacti every day?

He has a point.
My landscape is limited, also.
I don’t see towering mountains
out my window and I’m more
than a day’s drive away
from an ocean breeze.

I don’t encounter eagles often,
though I see hawks every day.
I’ve never seen a pink fairy duster
or a prickly pear, but my roads
are lined with ditch lilies, and the wild
budding of purple cone flowers
and black-eyed susans.

Who would I be if all these years, I had been handed a different landscape?

What if I had never experienced
being nestled at the end of a holler–
serried between foothills and forest?

What if my gardens had been filled with
cauliflower, celery, and English peas,
instead of tomatoes, corn, and zucchini?

What if my eyes hadn’t feasted
on palisades–those stone-faced
guards guiding the Kentucky River?

What if I hadn’t been fed bluegrass
and wide open skies at sunset
that look as good as cotton candy?

Who would I be if I weren’t made of Kentucky?