__________THE EMERALD WORDAPALOOZA__________
                
                MOTHER IRELAND               
 
At first
   I was land.
       I lay on my back to the fields
 and when I turned
       on my side
             I was a hill
 under freezing stars.
        I did not see.
                I was seen.
 Night and day
        words fell on me.
                         Seeds. Raindrops.
 Chips of frost.
    From one of them
        I learned my name.
                         I rose up. I remembered it.
 Now I could tell my story.
   It was different
        from the story told about me.
 And now also
   it was spring.
        I could see the wound I had left
 in the land by leaving it.
         I traveled west.
                           Once there
   I looked with so much love
 at every field
    as it unfolded
          its rusted wheel and its pram chassis
                            and at the gorse-
 bright distances
   I had been
 that they had misunderstood me.
 Come back to us
      they said
            Trust me I whispered.

                                         -Eavan Bowland

_________________See yall in June. _________________