The Find

Ruth on her knees in winter,
five months along,
divining what help could she
give to coming summer’s
harvest of blueberries,
drove the garden trowel to its hilt,
—daydreaming Excalibur’s
blade and guard, grip and pommel—
carving into the loam a damp hole for moon
potions and incantations.
There in half a foot
of black dirt and white
filamentary roots,
a silver locket, engraved
on its back, centered
edge to edge and top to bottom
with an omen, and its chain caught
out of sight and snagged at depth
beneath soil long since unturned:
“…let me Lovie Clark labor,
doing honest work
with my own hands,
so that I may have food
to share with anyone in need.”
–after Ephesians 4:28
Ruth on her knees, tapped
the locket against the trowel’s blade
as freckles of dirt fell away, then
some secondhand moved three clicks
of a hidden wheelgear, and
time stopped as still as the future.
For the case clicked open,
and it seemed a mirror there,
that sanguine face on the tintype’s sepia surprise.
Ruth had long stood or sat
in company and heard stories
of her grandmother Loventrice
planting fruited promises,
blueberries for untold bowls
into centuries to come each time
she heard news of a baby born abed.
And here was Ruth’s own likeness posing
questions of that which was then, and this which is now,
all fastened to the roots of a mute and unwilling plant.