Ruth's Choice

Ruth’s Choice Crossroads on a maize and dusty colored road – Sorrowing eyes look past Golden days into eyes of tears – Grieving – Words swallowed go unspoken Choices for daughters, Not born of the same womb, From a daughter brought here by hunger - Called now to return By a well-worn path To hills of olive trees - Remain or leave to travel Where barley fields Flow with kinsmen’s voices As the season lifts your hair of cooper fire; A blessing on the road releases Silken bonds and wedding vows – Yet a pledge of faithfulness Rejoins two hearts to walk together While one heart, divided by tears, remains Carrying pictures of these faces Painted forever in this monument of memory Pondering the unknown road Disappearing into a shimmering morning; This road remembers empty barns – The way back to the hillsides – Back to the beginning Reunited With faces wearing delight and compassion To encircle sojourners Carrying sheaves of retrospection To plant among the seeds Of harvest that never left This soil; Gather now and glean – In humble steps behind the harvesters Then sleep upon the threshing floor Where love reignites sowing Seeds in a field left fallow So an honored name not disappear As wind blows through the grain And sings of sons To change the world.