Ruth

I gave my heart three times. Each took me farther
out into the fields, swung a great scythe to clear
my way. I walked where love made opening.
I married a strange man, a foreigner who stirred
my hidden flesh. Every separate hair of me awoke,
as the young wheat springs upright in the rain.
His words swept me loose, beyond the bounds
of Moab. He said there used to be a wilderness
that women crossed on foot, limping, carrying
nothing but music. He said there was a god
not squeezed from clay, not set on a shelf.
Taller than clouds, he sighed, more beautiful
than molten gold. Sure as the barley in the seed,
biding invisible. I heard the story in his arms.
Maybe he saw how I was chafing, pressed
within the courtyard of our little house. Maybe
he knew that there was nothing I would be
allowed to keep when he lay cold, but that.
His mother walked off from the empty hearth
with empty hands. Shaky and shawled, I saw
she followed fire, a story woman come to lead
me out, and I ran to her side. I had no country but
her hand in mine. Her teachings shone like manna
in the dawn. Keren, she called them, sustenance;
the god rains down enough to see you through
one morning at a time. So I kept growing,
coming home to trust before I came to Canaan.
My Boaz found me famished in his field.
I swayed ripe with light. Harvested, I fell soft
at his feet. Gently he gathered me into a sheaf.