I – Book of Ruth
1. Famine devastated Israel—
despite the Peace, Order, and Good Government
the Judges had conjured up.
2. (Famine is a sanitizing sewer:
It’s as scouring as a waterfall,
but as scourging as poison gas.
Useless is Hunger.)
3. So, some somebody of Bethlehem
exited, with his helpmate and two boys,
seeking the greenery and Fertility of Mob—
that sugary geography,
yielding white honey, white milk, white wine.
4. This sojourner (pilgrim) was Miles;
his wife, Naomi;
and their sons were Mileage and Chili.
This petite tribe put down stakes in Mob,
hoping, “Grass, ruminated over,
always wells up milk and/or honey.”
5. But, evilly, Miles dropped dead.
(Dude was an ephemeral patriarch,
a vaporous archetype.)
Naomi was suddenly a single mom
to two restless, healthy swains.
6. Once big, Mileage wed Oprah
and Chili took Ruth.
They loved happily—a decade—in Mob.
7. Then, sorry news ancora:
Mileage and Chili expired.
Naomi was now a childless widow.
8. Three hubbies had proven as short-lived
as dethroned dictators.
All gone into graves as hollow as sepulchres.
9. Their corpses were blackened,
acrid like night,
staring down Sahara sands.
10. Naomi felt she was like a paintbrush—
splayed, frayed, splintering:
Ready to be trashed.
11. Time to quit the posthumous barbed-wire,
the thorny thickets:
A threesome of dead gents had turned pastures
into brambled graveyards.
Zephyrs had gone noxious
as bellies had gone nauseous.
12. Naomi told her widowed daughters-in-law—
Oprah and Ruth—
she’d quit Mob and go to Israel,
and line up for the homeless dole—
daily dollop—
of manna.
13. The three widows—kin by marriage,
but not by blood—
organized Naomi’s travel (back) to Israel.
14. Next, Naomi advised Oprah and Ruth,
“Each of yas now return to thy mamas,
who ought ta be gracious to yas,
for having husbanded our dead.
15. “May yas both be welcomed
by your dead mammies’ fam-lees.”
She kissed em both, to say
“Fare-thee-well.”
16. Naomi meant to drag em down
by their eyes—
these hardship blondes;
these hard-done-by,
hard-lookin bimbos.
17. Ruth and Oprah wept.
They protested:
“We wanna stay by you!”
