Lenten Ruth

Around the abandoned well
gallop horse weeds in a tangle
that no doubt holds snakes deep within,
yet she pulls her way through unafraid.
After all, she knows how
to take the clearing rake of bronze
and catch the writhing serpent,
casting it away far overhead
so that it slithers back to whence it came
long ago in some nearby far-off realm
where dew shines like jewels in the morning sun
revealing any out-of-place shadows.

So she patiently proceeds,
not knowing exactly why,
except that some Force compels her
to make her way in to the well
capped like an ancient altar
upon which fish were sacrificed
for sacred meals.
This is not her land,
yet she knows its course
in her own ancient river
of ancestral blood
that cries out
not for vengeance
but restitution, peace.  

So still she makes her way in,
through all the death,
rolling away the stone
to the sweet aroma of living water
at the bottom of the dark, 
as a flash of light proclaims
its rippled praise
in earthen rain from above.  

To most passersby
she is itinerant farm worker
moving unnoticed across the land.
But to those who peer more closely,
over the penumbral edge of obscurity
she is poet, preacher, love,
riding forth on labor's 
steady Belgian steed
of mourning hope
in Providence-dripping fields. 

    
                 © 2011 Tess  Lockhart. All rights reserved.