Authentic Love?

Authentic Love?

have you ever experienced
authentic love?
not love
coerced
by culture and custom
by law 
or nature
but pure love
like the love
for or from
a dog or cat
like love
for a sublime work of art
but directed
or received
toward or from
another person?

i don't know what to make of it
nature
confusing me
to the nature of love
when nature's
times of plenty or poor
times of feast or famine
times of harmony or distress
seem to dictate
differences
in what love 
sometimes blind
sometimes fearless
sometimes sacrificial
sometimes practical
is

if you know
without reference to scripture
what authentic love
for and between us
is
then please
let us know
cause 
authentic love
is beginning to feel
like a myth
of culture and custom
law
and nature
showing us one thing
then something else
completely different
like risking death
for one of the litter
then casting them all off
to whatever fate
without much distress
once it's time
to produce and defend
another
litter

maybe
the one of the litter
defended by its mother
is intended
to find another
to give and receive 
what its mother once gave
replacing it
with the care and concern
of one of its own kind or another
maybe that
is the force
that binds
by animal instinct
cat loving dog loving human
without all this
weighty
burdensome
scrutiny
from reason

most likely
i'm looking for a simple answer
to a riddle
that has no solution
cause love
seems to be many things
between the extremes
of selfless and selfish
caring and callous
so to accept it
as all those things
never pure
never authentic
never one simple thing
might be
the harder
but wiser way